The House of Crows
by Merlyn Pyndragon
Summary: Casefic: What should be a milk-run haunting morphs into more than what the Winchesters anticipated. Seeking to unlock secrets of the Corvus family massacre, they are ensnared in its curse, trapped in the mansion with only clues left by the spirits of the insane. Together, they must find out what had turned the family on itself, else the brothers join them in eternal madness.
1. Padlock

**Bored out of my gourd, I am. So I'm going to throw this down and see what I can beat out of the bushes. Thanks for giving it a shot.**

 **Inspired by games such as Haunted Mansion, Silent Hill 2 and the 'Can You Escape?' genre.**

 **Takes place sometime in the seventh season. Enjoy.**

* * *

 **5:07 PM**

* * *

~1~ Padlock

Corvus Manor looked to have been plucked from eighteenth century Europe and dropped on the edge of the suburbs of Kingsport, Tennessee. It was the offspring of an English castle and an Italian villa, built of pale yellow stone and stretching over three hundred feet from one end to the other. The middle section was three stories tall, with the two projecting wings on either side reaching four. The façade was plain, punctuated by white window frames and quoins, and crowned with a parapet. There were at least six chimneys, none spewing smoke. Sheltering the front door was a portico, supported by twin fluted columns. Ivy had long since devoured the western wing, swarming every brick and window, and was now creeping towards the middle section of the building, like dark veins through pale skin.

A long stretch of overgrowth before the manor might once have been called a garden. The white gravel pathway was riddled with weeds while fountains were black with lichen and slime. Swollen hedges rimmed lawns of dandelion and thistle. Drooping willows rippled in the breeze. A tall slate wall surrounded the entire property, the only notable entrance being at the foot of the walkway. The twisted, wrought iron gate, stained with age, depicted a twin set of crows, wings splayed, a mirror image of each other.

The black '67 Chevy Impala sitting before those iron gates purred and grumbled, and did not release its passengers. The sun was a silvery haze behind stone clouds, the wind heralding the coming winter. It was not inviting to the Winchesters.

"Oh yeah, this place has got haunted written all over it," said Dean flatly. "What's the story?"

Sam picked up a file from between his feet and riffled through the papers. "Built by the Corvus family in the early nineteenth century after they made their fortune in lumber and trade. Whole family lived there. Well respected for their employment rates and generosity. But the place was abandoned a hundred and fifty years ago after disputed claims. Possession has since fallen to a descendant of the family, but she doesn't live there."

"So what's weird about it?"

"Local lore says the place was cursed, making it uninhabitable, and driving most of the family insane," said Sam. "But there's no real record of anything like that happening. Only that the family nearly went extinct."

"How does _that_ not make the papers?"

"When Garth called he said he'd combed the library, and the historical society. Everything they should have about the estate and the time...just isn't there. It's like a hole in history. All that's left is local lore."

Dean's eyes flicked from one dark distant window to the next. "Alright. I get it. It's creepy. But we don't do creepy. We do creepy and _dangerous._ "

Sam raised a finger. "And that's why we're here. Garth also mentioned that earlier this week, three people went missing. Two were found right here, before these gates, belly-up. Autopsies suggested that they were – get this – _scared_ to death." He picked up a newspaper next and tossed it onto Dean's lap. "The third missing person eventually showed up. He was running around town two days ago. Clothes torn, bare footed, with half his hair ripped out. There was still some in his hands."

Dean grimaced, scanning the article. "Yikes."

"Yeah. Jogger had seen him running away from the estate, so she assumed that's where he'd been. When the police caught him, he was muttering something about music and long fingers."

Cold tendrils spread from Dean's spine. He blamed it on the wind slipping in through the cracked window. He rolled it up.

"So what are we thinking is in there?"

Sam shrugged. "Ghost. Cursed object. Maybe nothing."

Without needing to say it, they both knew that this was not nothing. If naught else, it was the lingering presence of the maddened Corvus family.

"...Let's get this over with." Dean got out first, turning up his collar. As he straightened, pushing the door shut, he scanned the area around him. The main road was hidden some ways back up the drive, and surrounding them were barren trees. Flat, mouldy leaves breathed underfoot as he made his way to the trunk. Sam joined him, hands in his pockets and glancing around furtively. Dean decided not to mention how not-so furtive he was appearing.

Armed with iron, silver, shotguns, pistols, and enough rock-salt to blast an army of ghosts, the brothers moved to stand before the gates, which loomed over two stories tall. The padlock and chain barring the way were old, and untouched.

Dean slipped bolt cutter jaws around the padlock's shackle and pushed the handles together, expecting the ancient steel to snap apart. It resisted. He frowned and tried harder. Tendons bulged in his neck and grunts worked their way out of his throat.

"Need a hand?" said Sam, mockingly sweet.

He gasped as he relaxed. "Shut up." Dean pulled the cutters free and drew his pearl-handled gun, shooting the padlock twice. The blasts startled dozens of crows out of the surrounding trees. Satisfied, Dean put the gun back, but then froze, staring at the undamaged padlock.

"...You must have missed," said Sam, no longer mocking, no longer sweet.

"Impossible." Dean grabbed the lock, turning it this way and that. The cold brass bit his fingers. He let it fall in disgust. It rattled against the chains.

"Up and over." Sam swung his bag to his back and started to climb the gate. Just as he gripped the foot of the iron crow, he yelped and dropped back down. Dean grabbed his shoulder to steady him.

"What the hell was that?"

Sam stared at his hand, opening and closing it, looking at it back to front. "I...I don't know. I thought I touched something sharp." He looked back at the gate, then slowly reached out with his left hand, tapping a picket as though it were hot. Then he grabbed it firmly. "Just be careful what you— _Ouch!_ " He yanked his hand away.

Dean saw blood. He grabbed Sam's wrist before he could withdraw, turning his palm upward. A cut opened up the tip of his finger. No, not a cut. A puncture.

Sam bared his teeth at the gate. "Dammit." He yanked his hand back, licking off the blood before pressing the wound with his thumb.

"I think we can agree a little bit of extra weird has been thrown in," said Dean, frowning.

"You think?"

"Well if we can't climb the gate or break the lock, we'll just have to find another way in." Dean looked up and down the slate wall stretching into the woods in either direction. He chose a side and forced his way into the thicket. As the going didn't get easier, he pulled out a machete from his bag and began to hack a path through, wary of where he set his feet. Sam followed close behind, scowling when he was struck by recoiling branches or snagged by foliage.

"Sorry, what?"

Sam froze. "Hey?"

"...Thought you said something."

Sam shook his head, and Dean shrugged before continuing.

Fifteen minutes later they were still following the slate wall, and they hadn't even turned a corner.

"Large property."

Dean stopped to rest his arm, which hadn't stopped hacking and slashing the entire time. Panting softly, he looked up at the top of the wall. "Hey. There's some missing spikes here. Maybe we can climb over. Give me a leg up, Sasquatch."

Sam rolled his eyes but knelt, back to the wall, fingers interlocked. Dean gripped his shoulder and stepped onto the makeshift stirrup. Taking measured breaths, Sam stood, grateful when his brother made efforts to grab any jutting pieces of slate to pull himself up and relieve some of the weight. But Dean couldn't reach the top.

"Stand still!" he ordered as he tried to step onto Sam's shoulders. The younger hunter grumbled, grimacing, but obeyed as best he could. Wasn't always easy being the taller of the two.

A sound of triumph notified Sam of their success, and the weight was lifted from his shoulders as Dean pulled himself up with arm strength alone.

"...Um, Sam?"

"What?"

"How long have we been walking?"

"...Fifteen minutes, give or take. Why?"

Dean's foot slipped but managed to find another outcrop of slate to hold him. "The house is... We're still right in front of it."

Indeed, it was as though Corvus Manor had turned to face them as they walked along the perimeter, keeping only the façade in plain view.

"Can you climb over?" called Sam.

"I...think I—" Suddenly Dean felt a slicing sensation through his palm. Crying out, he bailed, hoping Sam wasn't standing underneath him as he fell. With nowhere to roll, he had to let his feet and legs take the impact, sending a painful jolt through his body. "Ow."

Sam was at his shoulder in an instant. "The hell?"

"Get off, I'm fine." Dean stood shakily, and put his cut hand to the wall to catch his balance. The slate was coarse and cold under his fingers. But then he felt what could only be described as a _wiggle_ squirming through the stone. He yanked his hand away, staring at the wall with wide eyes.

"...Dean?"

He whirled around. Sam glanced between him and the wall, face lined with concern.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, just, um..." He made to turn away, but Sam grabbed his arm and turned his wrist up, just as Dean had done to him. He grimaced at the two-inch cut splitting the meat of Dean's thumb.

"Doesn't look like it needs stitches, but it should be cleaned."

"Speak for yourself. You'll be dead from tetanus before the week is out." Dean pinched the cut closed as Sam fished out a bandage from his duffle, then wrapped up his brother's hand. Dean snorted.

"Look at us. Hurt before we even started."

Tying the bandage off, Sam pounded him on the shoulder. "Maybe this will be the worst of it."

Dean scoffed, then picked up his machete. "This isn't working either. Go back."

It had taken the hunters fifteen minutes to get where they were. And yet they had only gone fifteen feet when they stumbled out of the foliage, right back with the Impala.

They stared at each other, mouths open but tongues silent. They spent several moments trying to find logic to this, until Sam finally remembered how to speak.

"...Is this a cue that we should get back in the car and leave with our tails between our legs?"

Dean scowled. "We need to find more about this place before we go storming in there. If it's hard getting in, how hard will it be to get out?"

"One guy managed."

"And according to you, he's one peanut away from a nut bar. What about the owner of the house? The descendant you mentioned."

"She lives in town. Why don't I speak with her, and you see if you can't get anything out of Mr Peanut."

Dean glared at the manor, then nodded curtly. "Then we try to get in again later today. I won't be bested by a gate and friggin' wall."

* * *

 **I own Supernatural.**

 **...**

 ***scoffs* Of course I don't. Wouldn't be writing this garbage if I did, now would I? Just borrowing the brothers for a while.**


	2. Will

**5:44 PM**

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~2~ Will

Lilly Anderson, not-so-proud owner of Corvus Manor, had retreated to a retirement home after Parkinson's made it near impossible for her to function on her own. According to a caretaker, she was moved to the second floor after she started seeing things.

"She's harmless, but we don't want her wandering off. Only those with a certain key can get off the second floor."

Dressed as a lawyer with an expression of care and sympathy, Sam talked his way into Lilly's room. The aged woman guided him to the table by his sleeve and sat him down. She refused to speak until a steaming cup of tea was set before him.

"Corvus Manor," she said, sitting across from him. Her teacup rattled in its dish as she picked it up. Sam noticed it was made of plastic. "They gave it to me after the terms in the will had come to pass."

"You never lived there?"

"No. I hated that place since I first laid eyes on it, seventy years ago."

To be polite, Sam tried the tea. It was laced with enough honey to fill a hive. "But you've been there."

Lilly took her time setting her tittering teacup back on the table, then moving it to just the right spot. "I have."

"What was it like?"

"...Why are you here, Mr Sheppard?"

He smiled. "As I said before, there are some prospective buyers hounding my firm. A couple from Ohio, a family in Germany, a businessman from Japan... You mentioned a will. May I see it?"

She stared at him. Her eyes were brown and almond-shaped, and her skin a gentle tan. Sam figured she was at least half First Nations. "Very well." She went to stand, but Sam put out a hand.

"I can get it. Where is it?"

She sighed and relaxed. "Thank you, child. There are some papers in the cupboard." She pointed, fingers shaking, and Sam went to a china cabinet set against the far wall. He soon found the documents of interest and returned to the table. A couple of the papers were yellow with age, including one that had a long family tree.

"As you can see, the last owner of the house, the honourable Judge Thomas Corvus, didn't say to whom specifically the manor should go to after he passed. He had four children and seven grandchildren, and they all lived there until..."

Sam, scanning through the will, looked up at her. "What?"

"...They...well they went mad, apparently. Killed their children, their siblings, their spouses. Even the servants weren't spared."

Although it had happened a long time ago, and although he had heard of worse, Sam felt his gut churn. "How do you know this?"

"I don't. These are stories. But there has been no evidence as to what happened to the Corvus family or where they went. Except for one member."

Sam stared at her, rapt.

"My great grandmother." Lilly gazed out the window, fiddling with a silver bracelet. Sam studied it. It had a bird charm dangling from it. "The youngest child of the youngest daughter. She, apparently, escaped the massacre, with the help of her nanny. She said the place was cursed. As a little girl I thought I believed her, even if no one else did."

"...It says here the house would become the property of the sole remaining member of the Corvus family. So that must be you." He glanced at the yellowed sheet with the family tree. Some of the youngest members didn't even have their death years written in.

She nodded. "I was a single child, as was my father. I have no kids. Everyone else..." She shrugged lightly. "Do you believe in curses, Mr Sheppard?"

"Ah, no, not really, Miss Anderson. Do... _you_ believe in curses?"

Her eyes returned to the window again. The clouds were iron grey but no rain fell. "With the stories of the Corvus massacre, and all my other family members dying untimely deaths, what else could it be? My father, he...he told me his grandmother, Agnes Corvus, dabbled in the supernatural. _She_ claimed the curse as true as the sun and stars. And then she disappeared." Suddenly Lilly stiffened. "You didn't come here to inquire about a silly old legend."

Sam smiled again, albeit shakily. "No. We digressed a fair bit. You said you went into the manor as a child. What was the state of it then?"

Was that fear in her eyes? She blinked and the veil was gone. "Did I say that? I...I meant I visited the grounds. I had not the key to get into the manor itself, and breaking in would have been...wrong."

"They gave you the house but not the key?"

"I told them to keep it for now. Until I was ready."

Sam glanced at the documents again. According to them, the manor had been hers for decades.

"If it's alright, I would like to have that key. I need to see if the place is up to standard, have it inspected—"

Her hand slapped down on the table, eyes now wide and wild. "No. Out of the question."

He blinked a few times. "Erm... Would you prefer if a representative on your behalf went with me? Or—"

"No one is to go into that house. Do you understand me? No one. Don't even go near it."

"But—"

"Leave, Mr Sheppard."

One look in her eyes was enough to let Sam know it was indeed time to leave. At least he didn't have to finish his honey-tea. He stood, thanked her for her hospitality, and left the room.

As he strode down the hall towards the stairs, he tucked a folded sheet of yellow paper into his jacket. He wasn't normally one for taking things from old ladies, but the family tree might be of use to him.

Ω

Dean's threads and stiff Terminator demeanour quickly got him through the barriers between the public and the loony toons. George Firandez had been admitted to the hospital psych ward after being apprehended by the cops, Dean had learned from the precinct. They'd described his behaviour as "animalistic" and "feral." From a man who had been an insurance broker just days ago, they were stumped. They, after all, couldn't blame it on anything supernatural. But that was when blokes like Dean came in.

He had just strode around the last corner, shoes clacking on white tile, when his façade was jostled by the sight of a familiar figure speaking with the cop stationed outside George's room. He almost called out, 'Garth!' but managed to swallow the name before it blew anyone's cover. But his sudden appearance had caught Garth's peripherals, and the wiry little man turned, face brightening.

"D— Agent!" Even though he had an audience, Garth didn't cheap-out on his signature greeting. A greeting which, in Dean's humble opinion, was just on this side of public indecency.

But he put on a smile and let Garth cross the gap between them and hug him.

"Good to see you, uh, sir. Didn't expect to find you here."

"No, I..." Garth cast a not-so-surreptitious glance over his shoulder before lowering his voice. "I put Sam and you on the scent but figured I'd better help out a bit. So I don't get too rusty." He pulled the lapels of his Texas Ranger jacket, complete with leather tassels. He seemed to think it was a better disguise than a federal agent, even though they were a few states away from the ranger homeland.

Dean forced a smile. "Have you gotten past Big Daddy over there?" He nodded his chin at the cop.

"Haven't tried. Got talking about this really good podcast called..." At Dean's expression, he faltered. "Doesn't matter. Why don't you give it a shot, Agent...Tyler?"

"Page." Dean approached the guard, pulling out his badge and flashing it briefly. "Agent Page. You've already met Chuck Norris here." As he tucked the badge away, Garth snickered a little too geekishly, earning an estranged look from both Dean and the cop. "...We'd like to see Mr Firandez if at all convenient."

George Firandez was handcuffed to his bed. His feet were similarly bound. Dean wondered if this was to keep everyone else safe, or to stop him from ripping out the rest of his scalp.

The man was staring at the ceiling, eyes flicking from one tile to the next, as though slowly counting them. His lips moved silently, and occasionally his tongue flicked out to moisten cracked lips. He didn't glance Dean's way as he came in, Garth on his heels.

"Mr Firandez? I'm Agent Page. I'd like to ask you a few questions... Mr Firandez? George?"

Dean leaned over him. George's eyes saw through him, still counting the tiles. When Dean waved a hand over his face, he didn't even blink.

"He's been like this for days," said Garth, reading the clipboard on the end of the bed. "Won't eat. Doesn't sleep. Engine's running but no one's driving."

"Looks like it." Dean pulled his EMF meter out. It was only on for two seconds before being shut off. A solid red line and steady wail meant spirit mojo, and lots of it. "You spoke to the witness who found him?"

"Yep. Says that unless he had been in the woods, he had come from Corvus Manor. That's where his amigos had been found."

"Dead."

"You betcha."

Dean scanned George's thin frame. He noticed that he was rubbing the tips of his fingers against those of his thumbs, in an almost compulsory way. Dean took his right hand and turned it upward, holding his fingers still. The first segment of his index finger was bandaged, but infection was still apparent.

"Does the report mention any serious injuries?"

Garth scanned through. "Besides the missing hair, broken fingernails and bloodied feet? Just a cut finger. It was stitched closed but doesn't seem to be showing any signs of healing."

Dean suddenly felt conscious of his own hand, the slice in his thumb. But he shook any thoughts of it aside.

"What are we thinking?" asked Garth.

"...Not sure. Ghost possession, maybe. Drove him mad. If he had somehow gotten into the manor, maybe he was cursed." Dean let the man's hand go, but before he could step back, George managed to pinch his sleeve. Dean flinched, eyes whipping over to meet George's.

"Song. Music. Fingers. Slick—black—fingers!"

Dean tried to withdraw his sleeve, but the man was stronger than he looked.

"Wanted out. All of them! Wanted out, out, _out!_ " He was frothing, eyes bulging and lolling. They rolled to Dean, pleading. "It's in my head. Can't pull it out! Get it out!"

Suddenly, he changed. Black goop began to leak out of his ears. Everything from his expression to his breathing, his posture, the look in his eyes; it all shifted. Dean knew that it wasn't George anymore.

The thing began to laugh, wild and loud and inhuman. It sounded joyful, triumphant. It began to pull at its restraints, back arching with the effort.

"Garth. Doctor."

Garth was out the door in a flash. Dean meanwhile pulled an iron nail from an inside pocket.

"This will only pinch a little." He pressed it to the possessed George's bare skin, and with a final screech, he collapsed. A gust of freezing air washed over Dean, and he saw his breath for only a moment before the spirit was whisked away, back to its anchor.

Dean had no time to check on George before he was pushed aside by the doctor and an army of nurses. He managed to snake his way out of there without getting stabbed with a needle, joining Garth in the hall. He nodded to him and they strode for the elevator in sync.

"Possession," said Dean. "There _is_ something in that house."

"But you got it out?"

"Yep." He checked his watch. "Damn. Suppose to pick up Sam in ten from the library. I'll call him and say—"

"I can cover this," said Garth. "You go see if there are any family records stored in the manor, and I'll meet you there."

Dean stared at him a few seconds, then shrugged a shoulder. "Yeah, if you want to. You don't have to, though, you know."

"Nope!" he replied cheerfully. "But I know you guys like someone to watch your backs. Unless of course you have Cas to do that already."

"Um, no, not right now."

"Great. See you in an hour!"

Ω

Thirty minutes later, the Impala rumbled towards the gates of Corvus Manor. Crows burst off the ground, cawing irritably, as the car eased to a halt. The birds glared down at the intruder from the trees.

" _Awk!_ " they cried. " _Awk!_ "

Just as before, the Winchesters did not leave the vehicle, content to view the mansion from the warmth of the interior.

"So there really wasn't anything on Agnes Corvus?" said Dean.

"Nope. Just like the rest of the family history. Couldn't find anything about her disappearance. Other than the disappearance part. She just fell off the map." Sam shrugged. "Unless she was a witch – which is entirely possible – she would have died, and her remains could be anywhere."

"If she survived the Corvus massacre she probably wouldn't come here to die, so her spirit won't be here. I'm more concerned with the people who _did_ die here and where _they_ were buried."

"Lilly said Agnes was the only survivor. But the family tree doesn't have the death years of all her siblings and cousins. Only some." Sam took the family tree out of his pocket to look at again. The print was small and thick, but he was able to read a lot of the names. And note how many of them died within a couple years of each other, which was all of them. All but for Agnes Corvus, Lilly's great grandmother.

Releasing a sigh, he leaned forward to view the house better. He shook off the feeling that the house was watching back.

"There's a chapel."

"What?"

Sam pointed, and Dean scanned until he spotted a steeple barely visible near the back of the manor.

"Consecrated ground."

"The family probably has their crypts in their own backyard."

"That's just gross."

"And a little cliché for the whole haunted mansion thing."

"At least we won't have to go inside. Hopefully."

They shared a look, but then Sam saw Dean's eyes flick over to something out Sam's window, his face suddenly ashen. The younger brother turned his head to look, but saw nothing.

"What is it?"

"...Nothing. Thought I saw something." Dean shook himself and got out. Sam was quick to follow, scanning the surrounding woods. Night was deepening, but neither of them were going to suggest waiting until tomorrow to break in.

Once again armed with a little bit of everything, plus a sack of salt and canister of kerosene, Dean also brought out an axe before slamming the trunk closed and striding for the gate and obstinate padlock.

Had it been foggy before? Sam frowned at the wispy tendrils slithering between the trees, drifting among the bushes of the garden beyond the gate. It seemed to be forming too fast, and moving too quickly.

He felt a fresh chill, and not from the imminent night.

Dean swung the axe down on the padlock. Sparks flew. When it didn't give, he attacked the chain, seeking a weak link.

Sam watched his brother labour, not noticing when his thoughts started to recoil in on themselves and his focus became dormant. It was because of this haze he saw something beginning to form in the fog beyond the gate. Around it seemed much darker, allowing him to see an unnaturally thin, gangling, hunched figure that was covering its face with pale hands—

Dean collapsed, soundless and instant, axe falling at his side.

Sam was jerked out of his trance, and he stared aghast at his brother.

"Dean? Dean!" He fell to his knees beside him, turning him over. He felt stiff and frigid, and his eyes were open but unseeing.

" _Dean!_ " He shook him, harder and harder. His body was like a corpse.

Sam went to feel for a pulse, but before his fingers even touched Dean's throat, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

He leaped to his feet, handgun out, standing over his brother as he turned in a circle. The figure in the garden had vanished. Vanished, but not gone. Sam could feel it.

Fog curled around his feet. The wind whispered through the trees. In the distance, a dog barked, the echos lonely and mournful.

And then Sam saw it, moving swiftly between the trunks towards him. He knew not what it was, nor could he recall what it looked like. But it instilled such a terror in him that it instantly stopped his heart, giving him no chance to scream, no chance to so much as take a breath or close his eyes before he fell, stiff and cold, beside his brother.

Above, perched in the brittle branches of ancient trees, a murder of crows filled the air with their callous cries.


	3. Wake

**7:06 ?**

* * *

~3~ Wake

Whispers. Dark, indistinct, sourceless. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make out any words, though words they were. Were they man's? Woman's? Child's? All or none? Were they scared, secretive, or angry?

All Dean knew was that when he opened his eyes, they ceased to be heard.

It was dark. He could make out the deepest darkness above him, a rectangle void framed with a lighter darkness. He was lying on something soft, almost comfortable, which did not make sense. He was out in the middle of the woods, his brother by his side and Baby at his back...

Perhaps that had been a dream. Perhaps he and Sam had settled with a hotel after all...

Dean sat up, faint but growing stronger with every breath. The air was old, smothering, like he was in a box.

He reached out to his right and was surprised to feel fabric. Grasping it, he pulled it aside, and realized he was sitting on a four-poster bed, complete with heavy drapes, which someone had thoughtfully closed around him to give him privacy while he slept.

He jerked. Who the hell would have done that? Where _was_ he?

Dean pushed the curtain aside more, leaning forward to peer through the gap. He was in a bedroom, but one that looked like it hadn't hosted anyone in decades. Sourceless grey light revealed a wall with shoddy, torn wallpaper and a vanity desk with a broken mirror. The chair was missing. Papers, looked to have been torn from a book, were scattered all over the floor, and had been there for so long they were becoming part of the rug. A shelf sat high on the wall, bearing a vase, a few books and a toy horse.

Dean patted himself down. He felt fine, albeit shaken and confused. He had a revolver in his waistband, one he recognized as one of Dad's. His cellphone and lighter were gone. He was in the same clothes he wore when...when...

He frowned. When what? When he fell asleep? When he blacked out? He still couldn't remember what happened. And where was...

"Sam?"

His voice filled the room all too readily, and it seemed to stiffen with the single word. Nothing responded.

Slipping off the bed, he let the curtain fall behind him and took in more of the room. A wardrobe stood against the wall opposite of the bed, elegant and claw-footed. The canvas, grey with age, that was supposed to be covering it was in a heap on the floor. The wall on his left held the source of the faint light – a twin pair of inset windows, the drapes torn from their hangings. The glass was mottled but it was clear what was beyond them. A thick, stirring wall of fog.

Dean tried to open the windows but the latches wouldn't even budge. He had nothing to pick the hinges with and smashing the glass seemed too risky. There might be something nearby that best not be alerted.

He turned to the door, and found the vanity desk's missing chair. It was propped up against the door knob, barring it shut.

He stared at it. Surely he would have remembered putting that there. Surely he would have remembered coming into the room in the first place.

"Sam?"

As before, silence.

Conscious of his gun, he pulled the chair away and reached for the door knob. Before he could touch it, he heard a faint click, then a drawn-out creak.

He turned back to the room. Was it a window? Was something coming in from the foggy abyss outside?

A quick look revealed this wasn't the case. He felt tension leave his body, but only slightly. If not the window, then what made that sound? Turning, his eyes fell to the wardrobe. He frowned. Wasn't it closed before?

The revolver was in his hand before he knew it. And in the same stroke he felt despair. The chambers were empty. But it was still a weapon and the sight of it would make anything pause.

At least, that's what he told himself.

Aiming the gun at the wardrobe, Dean reached out with his left hand, inching closer and closer before grabbing the edge of the door and yanking it open. He leaped back to give himself room...

It was empty.

Dean lowered the revolver, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at himself. He went to close the wardrobe door again when he saw something hanging from the bar inside. Squinting, he grasped it, feeling a cold, hard shaft of some kind. A key. He tugged it off its leather thong and inspected it. It was old fashioned, tarnished, its handle moulded into the likeness of a rose.

Glancing into the wardrobe again, he saw a faint square pinned to the back panel. He plucked it off, the paper thick and stiff between his fingers, and discerned three words.

 _Come find me._

All at once, all the suppressed fear and unease drained from his limbs, and he chuckled. "Oh, Sammy."

It had been a trick all along. Sam must have slipped him a sleeping pill or something, then, when he'd blacked out, brought him here to this room just to mess with him. Usually it was he, Dean, who started these prank duels, but it looked like Sam decided to cast the first stone.

"A nice try, but you must have known it wouldn't last." Dean casually scanned the room again, its forlorn aura no longer penetrating his senses. He smirked as his eyes fell on the one thing he hadn't yet investigated. The bed.

"The chair gave you away," he continued jauntily, making his way over. "I might have left the room to search for you elsewhere, but..."

He dropped to the floor and grasped the bottom edge of the curtains, lifting them up. "Ha!"

Nothing. Even in the dim light he could tell no one was hiding under there. But there was something...

He reached in and grabbed hold of the next best thing – bullets.

"Now why are these...?"

He realized he didn't care. A loaded gun was more of a comfort than sense was right now, for often sense abandoned the world when the supernatural came knocking.

He stood and slipped a bullet into each of the six chambers of the revolver. Giving another sweep under the bed, he discovered no more. But he was still grateful.

"Okay." Armed, steady, and determined, Dean Winchester opened the door and stepped into the unknown.

* * *

Sam had woken up in many a strange place. Under bridges, in the woods, in hotels he didn't remember checking into and even on a park bench once or twice. He always figured out how he got there. But never, in all the odd situations he'd been in, had he woken up in a footlocker.

At least, he assumed it was a footlocker. On his back, he couldn't move his elbows out to the sides further than a few inches apiece. His knees were up at his chest and his feet were pressed against another side, leaving him no room to stretch his legs. His spine ached from being pressed against the bottom in his curled position.

He was cramped. Surpassing the pain was the sudden flash of claustrophobia, which made him seize and his heart jolt.

 _Deep breaths, deep breaths..._

As he calmed, he became aware of a repetitive, slow creaking. Listen as long as he might, he could not place the sound.

Slowly, he began to shift, inching his shoulders up until his head touched the curved lid of the chest. He stifled groans as blood rushed to the places that had been deprived, pins and needles assaulting his limbs. Not for the first time, he cursed his juggernaut build.

 _Creeeak...creeeak..._

Slowly, he pressed his hands against the chest lid. He almost sighed in relief as dim light beamed through the narrow gap, but stowed it and only lifted the lid enough for him to peer through. His pupils constricted as he scanned what little of the room he could see.

There, the source of the creaking. A rocking chair, slowly being rocked by someone facing the other way, before a window. By the clothes and bonnet he assumed it was a woman. Sam's attempt to ask for help died in his throat.

 _Creeeak...creeeak..._

He looked from side to side, taking in more of the hazy, blue-grey room. Mould and water stains concealed what colour the walls were supposed to be. There were two beds against the far wall, flanked by nightstands with oil lamps. Three floating shelves above them had few possessions to hold. To the left was the window and rocking chair, and to his right was a door. His escape.

Sam felt his pockets. He only found a knife and small flashlight. No cell phone. No EMF reader. Surely there was something in the room made of iron. If the woman in the rocking chair was a ghost...

 _Creeeak...creeeak..._

 _Creak._

Sam paused, then tore his eyes from the door. The rocking chair had ceased to move, and of the woman there was no sign.

The silence, somehow, was worse than the incessant creaking. Sam swallowed, lowering the lid a little and turning his head to scan the room. With a jolt he spotted her, standing beside the chair, facing the chest, facing him. She was dressed in a black gown with a white apron, like a maid from an age gone by. Her face was young but he knew it had seen over a century.

"Fredrick?" she said.

Sam remained silent, taut.

"Fredrick?" She took a step towards him. Her cheeks were damp with tears. "They're coming, Fredrick. Help me. Help me!"

She screamed, jaw spreading unnaturally long, and rushed at him without moving her feet. Before she reached the chest, she dissipated into smoke, her shriek echoing into a memory in Sam's head.

He relaxed his jaw, which had cramped from clenching so tightly. His chest was tight and he took several deep breaths. Slowly, he pushed the chest lid open, peering around cautiously. The ghost maid was gone.

Floorboards moaned in sync with him as he stepped out. He straightened slowly, shaking his arms and legs and stretching his back. How the hell someone had managed to wrestle him into that footlocker would forever remain a mystery.

The only light came from outside, filtered through a dense wall of fog. Sam tried to see through it, to figure out where he was and hopefully not settle on his initial presumption.

Corvus Manor.

It was impossible to see out. His breath misted against the glass, and he had an odd inclination to wipe it off with his sleeve before turning to the rest of the room.

Aside from the vanishing maid, the room was the same. He gently pushed the rocking chair, making it creak.

On the nightstand, beside the oil lamp, Sam spotted a book. No, a journal, its cover leather and spattered with something dark. Clicking on his flashlight, he picked it up and opened it.

Few words were legible. The date read October 14, 1844, that much he could tell, but the rest of the page, and scores of pages afterwards, were stained, burned, or torn out altogether. Here and there he found parts of sentences.

 _...scandal for the ages. Imagine, a judge..._

 _...beast spotted on the grounds... but the others think it's something else..._

 _Sickness has struck..._

 _...blood was found in the parlor...we are without Pastor Gregory's prayers..._

 _...no longer safe..._

Near the end, the date was 1846. The last line of the last page was untarnished and clear, as though deliberately protected. It was written with a hasty hand.

 _They are coming._

Tingles spread up his spine, and Sam dropped the journal and whirled around. But he was alone.

Nothing else in the room took his interest. Knife in hand, he strode for the door. If he was in the manor, Dean must be as well.

He opened the door, slowly edging out into the corridor beyond. He looked left, then right, then left again. Long, concentrated looks soaked up every detail. A scarlet rug stretched the entire length of the floor. The roan walls were stained with black and patched with yellow where the paper had been torn. Doors led to places unknown. A few hall tables held lit candles, which had wept so much wax their stands had been buried. Who had lit the candles, Sam could only guess.

He stepped further into the corridor, still looking around.

"Dean?" He sounded as though he were on his deathbed. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Dean?"

Air moved through the hall. Breathing. Unnerved, Sam chose a direction and approached the first door. He jiggled the handle. Locked. The next door. Locked. The third door. Locked also.

Scowling in frustration, he tried one more, thinking that if it didn't open, he would leave the corridor and try his luck elsewhere. Surprisingly, it opened, to reveal another simple bedroom. But no Dean. The next few unlocked doors also led to bedrooms, which were empty of anything useful and, thankfully, ghosts.

He had just finished scouring the latest room for iron or a better weapon when he heard footsteps. Relief hastened him out the door.

"Dean! Dean, I—"

Sam stared down the hall, which ended with a window looking out into the fog. The heavy footfalls continued, but he saw no one. He glanced behind him, then forward again, advancing.

"Dean?"

The footfalls faltered, and then renewed with speed, as though someone was running towards him. Sam brandished his knife, eyes wide to locate the ghost charging him. Then he realized...he couldn't see his breath. It was far from balmy in the manor but he wasn't freezing.

As though knowing of his revelation, the footsteps stopped altogether, and Sam was once again alone.

"Where are you, Dean?"


	4. Grandfather

**7:18**

* * *

~4~ Grandfather

Revolver in hand, Dean crept through the hall, which was leading him towards the main section of the building, out of one of the wings. He couldn't tell which floor he was on, for he had yet to find stairs in his slow, methodical search for Sam. He was no longer convinced this was a game set up by his brother, but he was certain this was Corvus Manor. And there was definitely something wrong with it.

The giggling he'd heard more than once was creepy, but the dark laughter and distant wails of an infant were downright haunting. He was always cold, yet his breath never plumed. Then there was the tinkle of a music box, heard so briefly and so faintly he thought he'd imagined it.

What disturbed him the most, however, was that in every portrait he passed in the hall, the eyes had been scratched out, as though with a nail. One painting was so badly ravaged he couldn't tell if it had once depicted a man or a woman, or even a dog.

"Sam?" He tried several more doors, all locked. His rose key was useless. "Sammy?"

He began to lose hope as he soldiered on. What if only he had been kidnapped? Would Sam know where to start looking? They couldn't even get through the gate! And yet Dean was here...

The wall vanished to his left, a balcony overlooking the foyer. Two sets of stairs curved down ninety degrees to the ground floor at either end of the railing, mirroring each other. A massive, tacky chandelier hung like a swollen pear from the ceiling, coated in cobwebs. At the bottom of the far staircase, a grandfather clock ticked and tocked against the wall, the pendulum barely visible through the dusty glass door. The floor, railings and trimmings were mahogany, accented with rich purple decor. Dean was sure that even with the bright of day and a thousand candles, the foyer would still look depressing.

"No wonder these blokes killed each other."

"Dean?"

He perked. "Sam?"

"Dean!"

A familiar face looked up at him from where it had emerged from somewhere below the balcony. Dean deflated with relief, but kept a hard expression.

"The hell have you been?"

"Could say the same to you."

Dean trotted down the stairs, trying not to look eager. "Waking up in a strange bedroom is not something I would normally object to, but..."

Sam grimaced. "I was in a footlocker."

"Cozy. So. What happened?"

Sam paused, eyes flicking from place to place, trying to remember. "...You...collapsed. Out by the front gate. That's the last thing I remember. I must have passed out next."

"...Were we drugged?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Haven't eaten all day."

"You had tea with Lilly Anderson."

"But I'm guessing you didn't with Mr Firandez."

"Hmph."

The silence drew on between them, broken only by the grandfather clock, then they both turned towards the front door. Striding for it together, Dean reached for the handle, which looked too fancy for its simple purpose, and gave it a tug. It didn't budge. The lock wouldn't turn, and they knew there was no chance of smashing the solid wood door down.

"Should have expected that," said Sam softly.

Dean looked around, then tapped Sam's shoulder before nodding at a settee by the stairs. Putting away their knife and gun, they dragged the bench away from the wall. Sam picked it up from the front and Dean, the back, holding it like a battering ram. They moved to stand before the nearest window, and began to swing the settee forwards and back.

"On three. One. Two. _Three!_ " They released it, sending it end-first at the window. Expecting the glass to shatter, they were almost too slow to leap out of the way as the bench rebounded, two legs shattering upon impact. It slammed to the floor, the noise echoing off the walls to unseen reaches of the manor.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

Dean thought about his gun. He could shoot their way out. But more likely he would waste his precious ammo on glass that likely still wouldn't shatter.

"Supernatural lockdown. Awesome."

"Maybe there's a back door," said Sam, but he didn't sound optimistic. Why would any other door be easier to exit through than this one?

Dean looked around. Below the balcony, a wide corridor led off to darkness. To the left and right, under carved arches, were spacious areas. The room on the left looked to be a large coatroom, closed doors on the other end. The one on the right was some kind of library, with books filling shelves that stretched up beyond the view through the doorway.

"Listen."

Dean glanced at Sam. "What?"

He turned towards the grandfather clock. "It stopped."

"...Okay. They have to be wound. It was bound to stop eventually."

"But now? And...who wound it before?" Sam made his way over to the silent antique. The hands had stopped at seven twenty three. He felt the edges of the face, the curling pediment at its crown, and along the door. It seemed pretty normal. Except the moon dial was missing, and, he realized with a jolt, the face showed thirteen hours, not twelve.

"Well?"

Sam jumped. "Um...nothing...too weird."

"In a place of weird, that's a relief."

Sam stepped back from the clock, turning to survey the foyer.

"Look inside."

"What?" said Dean, the exact same time as Sam. The brothers frowned at each other, but then movement caught the corner of Dean's vision, and he glanced up to the balcony, only to stiffen and draw his gun.

A little girl was crouched there in a black dress, pale hands clinging to the railings. She gazed down at them with baleful eyes. "Look inside."

"What's your name?" Sam asked gently.

She stared at him, then sprang up and dashed away, the slap of bare feet quickly fading.

"Hey!" Dean cried. "Get back here!"

Sam ran for the stairs, taking three at a time, Dean on his heels. But suddenly, the stairs weren't stairs anymore. When Sam's foot next came down, it met the decline of a slide, and it shot out behind him as though it were sleek with oil. His face slammed into the slide as he began to shoot back down.

"Hey—!" Dean tried to jump too late and toppled over him, and together they slid all the way back down the curving staircase in a tangle of arms and legs. Their combined weight crashed into the grandfather clock, and it tipped forward, smashing against the mahogany floor with a loud, mournful _twong!_

"Get off me!"

" _You_ get off!"

The brothers managed to untangle themselves without pulling anything, and stood, flustered.

"What the hell was that?"

"I don't know." Sam glared at the slide, which was a staircase again.

"...Do we try the other stairs?"

Sam rubbed his nose, which still smarted from the face-plant. "Go ahead."

Dean grimaced. "Fool me once..."

The brothers looked up at the balcony where the little girl had disappeared. She must have been a ghost, and yet she said...

"Look inside." Sam glanced around. "Look inside of what?"

Dean's eyes went to the grandfather clock. He pointed, and then the brothers rolled it onto its side. Sam grimaced. It would have been a valuable antique these days. The glass protecting the face had spiderwebbed, and the weights and pendulum spilled out of the shattered door like brass innards.

With another heave, the men rolled it onto its back. Springs and gears popped free. The hands had fallen off the face. Any hope that it could be salvaged was gone.

"Good riddance, I say," Dean grumbled. "Have you ever tried to sleep in a place with one of these things clanging its way through every hour?"

Sam ignored him, reaching up into the clock through its throat. He felt around, touching cogs and gears and everything that made a clock tick.

"Anything?" said Dean impatiently. Sam winced as he reached in further.

"There's something—AAAUGH!"

"Sam!"

He hauled back on his arm, trying to tug his hand out of the clock. But it had clamped down on his wrist. Dean grabbed him by the arm and tried to help him pull it out, bombarded with the image of it coming free without a hand.

Before he could think of anything else, Sam's free hand lashed out – and grabbed Dean by the jaw. He froze for but a moment, and then he tried to pry Sam's fingers away. With horror he saw that his brother's eyes had rolled up, exposing only the whites.

And with a voice not his own, Sam began to speak.

" _By_ _children's_ _laughter and_ _children's_ _pain,  
_ _You'll find me if you play my game.  
_ _Break the burden, free the chained,  
_ _Save all those whose faith had waned._ "

"Sam," Dean rasped, hitting his wrist with the heel of his hand. His jaw felt like it was going to snap in two. "Sammy!"

" _In string and key and wood and wind,  
_ _Go to where the honoured sinned:  
_ _Shattered vows and tainted trust,  
_ _Succumbed to pleasure, to passion, to lust._ "

Even as he struggled, Dean listened, engraving every word into his mind.

" _Hunt them down and tarry not,  
_ _Or lost you'll be and soon forgot.  
_ _A curse of heart, of soul, of mind,  
_ _In history lost, salvation you'll find._ "

Exhausted air left Sam's lungs in a rush, and his eyes returned to normal. He blinked several times before realizing what he was doing, and released his brother in horror.

"Dean!"

Dean drew away, rubbing his jaw and glaring. "Thanks for that," he growled.

"Oh my God. What happened? Why did I...?" He suddenly realized the clock was no longer clamped around his hand. He yanked it out and was relieved to find it unharmed.

"Don't know," said Dean. "But your eyes rolled up and you started saying a bunch of weird, dark Dr Seuss crap."

"What did I say? Do you remember?"

"Every word." Dean recited the lines, thinking whoever composed them should never get their works published.

"So the manor _is_ cursed," said Sam thoughtfully. "And...we're part of it."

"But how? We aren't related to the Corvus family."

Sam shook his head. "No. But they asked for our help."

"How d'you figure?"

"'Break the burden, free the chained...'"

Dean paused. "'Save all those whose faith had waned.'"

Sam nodded, unconsciously flexing his hand. "A curse bound them. It drove them insane, then bound them." He looked back at the clock. "There's something in there..."

"Ooooh no." Dean grabbed his arm. "You are not reaching in there again."

"It might be a clue, Dean! What's the worst that could happen?"

"Um, you're _possessed_ again? Let me do it—"

Sam had already reached inside the clock again, behind the face. Moments later he pulled out a folded piece of paper. Frowning, he opened it up. "It's a map of the first floor."

Dean leaned closer, and pointed. "We're here. I must have come from there. Or that wing, anyway, but on the second floor."

"And I was in this wing, on this floor." Sam pointed to the other side of the manor.

They studied the plan, etching it into their memories. It was simple, hand-drawn, as though a servant had done it on their first day of work to find their way around. Most of the places were labelled. To the left of the foyer was the library, which connected to a music and entertainment room. To the right was a reception area and parlour. The corridor beneath the balcony led to a dining hall, the kitchens, pantry and a sun room. In the corridor was the narrow passage that led to the servants' quarters in the east wing, which was where Sam had emerged from. Behind the house, disconnected, was the chapel. Small crosses had been sketched in, no doubt signifying gravestones.

Dean tapped the furthest space in the east wing. "I think that's were we need to go."

Sam blinked. "The music room?"

"' _In string and key and wood and wind, go to where the honoured sinned_ ,'" Dean recited. He paused. "The honoured?"

"...The honourable Judge Thomas Corvus. He was the last owner of the manor." Sam looked towards the music room, frowning. "If we go, maybe more verses will make sense." He folded the paper back up and stood.

"Wait, wait, wait." Dean took the plan, unfolding it and pointing to the kitchen. "We go there first."

"...You really think we'll find salt? Been a few years since anyone's lived here."

"It's salt. And besides, this is hardly a normal haunted mansion."

Dean led the way, following the wide corridor beneath the balcony. At the end they pushed through a set of double doors. On the left was the way to the kitchen and the pantry. On the right was the dining hall. Plates, glasses and cutlery were set for dinner, lit by the eerie grey light of the fog beyond the windows.

"What's that?" Sam nodded at another door, opposite from the pantry. Its knob was at chest height, which hinted at stairs behind. Dean looked at the plan and shrugged. "Just shows stairs. Must be a way into the basement."

"Or a cellar."

The brothers shared a look.

" _'I'll swallow your soul!_ _I'll swallow your soul!_ _'_ " Dean rasped, wide-eyed and leering, reaching out for his brother.

"Focus, Ash." Rolling his eyes, Sam stepped into the kitchen.

It was massive, clearly built to prepare food for dozens of people. No doubt the Corvuses held many lavish parties in their day. How else to flaunt your wealth but invite others to see it in person?

"I'll check here," said Dean. "You scope out the pantry."

Sam nodded. Time was against them, and they needed to find the means of defending themselves quickly so they could get on with the riddle.

He turned from the kitchen, flicking on his flashlight as he made towards the pantry. Sam pushed the door open, revealing tall shelves covered in jars, cans, jugs, boxes, canisters and countless other packages, coated in the dust of decades. Leaving the door open, he began to scout for salt.

In the kitchen, Dean rummaged through cabinets and shelves, opening anything that looked like it might have even a pinch of salt. But as the minutes ticked past, he remained empty handed.

"Come on, what kitchen doesn't have salt?"

The dim light wasn't helpful either. Sam needed the flashlight to see in the windowless pantry, but the foggy glow emitting through the kitchen windows, casting everything in a grey haze, was far from illuminating. It was a relief, then, when Dean came across a stash of oil lanterns.

"Hello, darlings."

He pulled one out and found a box of matches nearby. Lighting the lantern, he pocketed the rest of the matches and fiddled with the dial until the flame burned as brightly as possible.

Something jingled. Dean spun around, expecting Sam, fearing all else. But the kitchen was empty.

Dean shook his head. Now he was hearing things. He carried the lantern over to a new counter, upon which were stacks of pots and pans. Then the jingling sound came again.

"Sam?"

"What?"

His voice was distant. He was still in the pantry.

Dean abandoned his quest for salt, senses on high alert. It was how he became aware of the deepening silence. Always there had been the low exhales of the house. Always there had been a creak underfoot, the occasional ghostly whisper or the sound of his brother's breathing. Now, there was nothing.

Then, a slicing sound. Short, soft. And because of the lantern, he was able to spot the source: a knife had pulled itself out of a block and was suspended in the air, turning slowly. When its point found him, he had but a second to dive beneath an island before the blade shot towards him. It clattered against the wall over his head.

"Well that's just typical."

He heard more blades draw themselves out of the knife block, of various shapes and sizes, all deadly. One by one they tried to impale him, and he was forced to duck and weave and use a stockpot as a shield.

"Dean?"

His brother appeared in the doorway.

"Sam, look out!"

"Whoa!" Sam threw himself out of the path of a butcher's cleaver, sucking in his gut as it spun past, chopping the air. It embedded itself in the dining table, several yards away.

"Dean, get out of there!"

 _Clang! Crash! Thud!_ More knives found the stockpot, the wall, or the cupboards in their determination to make sushi out of the elder Winchester. There seemed to be an endless supply of sharp things. Even carving forks and cork screws gave it a go.

Finally, Dean was crouched between two islands, and only a short stretch lay between him and his escape. But short as it was, it seemed a mile with the cutlery flying everywhere.

Sam chanced only brief glances into the kitchen to check his brother's progress.

"Come on, just a little further!"

Frankly, Dean looked ridiculous, with an oil lantern in one hand and a battered, scratched stockpot in the other.

"Kinda under fire here, Sam."

Sam clenched his teeth, muscles jumping in his jaw. Time for impulsiveness.

"Hey!" He stepped out into the open, spreading his arms, glaring defiantly. "Over here!"

A dozen blades turned their points to Sam, and shot towards him all at once. He spun out of the way, an instant before he was skewered. Before more ammunition could be picked up by the unseen assaulter, Dean charged from the kitchen and slammed the door shut behind him. Several thuds peppered the solid wood, but no blade made it through.

Both hunters were breathing heavily. The oil lantern cast elongated shadows against the walls behind them.

"Hostile kitchen," said Sam. "Should have seen that one coming."

"I guess dinner wasn't quite ready," said Dean, trying to smile. "Find anything?"

Sam pulled out a couple glass shakers from his pocket. "This is all."

He shrugged and took one. "Better than nothing." Pocketing it, he made his way past the dining table, over to a pair of French doors which, according to the map, led out towards the graveyard. But all he could see was the thick wall of fog. He tried the door handle, knowing full well it was locked.

"I don't think we have enough salt to burn a whole family anyway," said Sam softly. "We need to find a way to get to the Impala..."

Footsteps. Rattling chains. The brothers stiffened, turning this way and that, expecting something to appear out of the darkness. Wood creaked overhead, and the footsteps halted. Then, a sobbing, aggrieved wail, as though someone was begging for mercy but could not speak.

Finally, silence once more, but for the low breathing of the manor.

Sam shivered, willing his goosebumps to smooth. Dean didn't seem as affected, but he was better at hiding his fear: behind aggression.

Sam clicked off the flashlight. "So. Music room?"

* * *

 **I apologize for the "poetry" in this chapter.**


	5. Oblivion

**7:39**

* * *

~5~ Oblivion

Dean led the way back to the foyer, away from the hostile kitchen. They stepped around the ruined grandfather clock and into the library. Across the way was the double doors to the music room. But the brothers paused, scoping the library for potential threats.

The dim light from the windows on the left was insufficient to illuminate the whole room properly, the opposite end veiled in shadow. The walls were covered in shelves, from corner to corner, floor to...what they could assume to be the ceiling. It was so tall, it too was lost to darkness. Every shelf was packed with books of various colours and sizes. More books were stacked on the floor, one on top of the other, to impossible heights, leaning but not toppling. A single armchair, pale green and worn, sat a few metres away, an open book left on its arm. Although Sam was curious as to what book it was, he dared not venture from the ring of light around the lantern.

He followed Dean to the double doors, and together they pushed them open.

To the left, bay windows emitted little light. Using the matches Dean had taken from the kitchen, Sam lit a candelabra from a nearby bureau. He reckoned there was a good two hours left for the three candles.

Picking it up, he stepped further into the room. In the bay, silvery in the filtered light, a grand piano sat on a dais, its lid propped up. Flanking one side of it was a trio of cellos leaning in stands, bows resting on stools beside them. On the other side of the piano was a flute, set on its own stool as though the musician had simply left it there but minutes ago. Scattered on the floor were many sheets of paper, the music written on them faded.

In the middle of the room was a matching furniture set, including two sofas and two armchairs, all facing each other. In the centre was a small, low table coated in dust, bearing an ash tray. A pipe lay discarded beside it.

Stiff and alert, the men crept further into the room. Sam went right, to see what lay beyond the reach of the outside glow. The candlelight revealed a worn, wooden floor, open and uncluttered. Perhaps a dance floor.

Around the walls were more bookshelves, although they were small and manageable compared to those of the library, as well as a dry bar and a few spare chairs. There was a fireplace in the opposite wall, the wooden mantle decorated with vines and leaves.

Sam scanned the desolate space, but nothing caught his interest. He sighed. Then he heard three notes of the piano and whirled around. He was relieved to see that Dean had sat down on the bench and was the one pressing the keys.

"Dude." Sam frowned at him.

But Dean stared at the piano, running his hand along the yellowed ivory. "' _In string and key and wood and wind...'_ " He pressed a few more keys. They were hollow and out of tune, and the sound made the goosebumps ripple up Sam's spine again.

As he watched, Dean stood, leaving the lantern beside the piano. He crouched and began picking up the scattered pages of sheet music. The sides that had been facing the floor for over a century were still readable, if barely. He chose one with a title, the beginning of a lost song, and set it on the piano's music rack. Then, sitting back down, he squinted at the paper, trying to make out the notes.

Sam stared. "Since when...?"

"Shh." Hesitant, Dean hit a few keys, slow, deliberate, struggling to make out the faded ink. "Sam, pick up a cello."

He scoffed. "I don't play."

"Just do it."

With a sigh, Sam left the candelabra on the table beside the ash tray and stepped over to the dais. He chose the cello on the right, picking up the bow and sitting on the stool, his back to the bay windows. Grasping the neck of the instrument, he pressed strings at random and drew the taut horse hairs across the strings, just above the bridge. Expecting both string and hair to snap from decades of neglect, he winced as the instrument screeched. He moved his left fingers to different positions and tried again, barely touching the bow to the strings. This time, the note was smooth, humming richly. It wasn't tuned, like the piano, but for someone who had never held such an instrument in his life, he thought it sounded pretty good.

As he stroked it again, pulling the bow this time, Dean pressed a few more keys. Then he hit two at the same time.

When the piano took over, Dean could only stare. His hands hovered over the keys as they pressed themselves, playing the song on the music sheet of its own accord. Slowly it tuned itself, filling the room with a gentle, yet cheerful music.

Dean twisted in the bench to look at Sam, aghast. The younger brother stared back, then flinched as the cellos beside him sat up on their own, the bows floating up to rest against the strings. At the same time, Sam felt something take over his hands, and they began to play for him, joining the piano in the lively composition. The trio of cellos tuned themselves as the piano had.

He would have thought it sounded good if he wasn't being forced to play along.

"Um, Dean...?"

The piano hadn't trapped _him._ Dean leaped up off the bench as soon as he saw his brother ensnared by the possessed cello. But instead of freeing him, as Sam expected, Dean strode around to the other side of the piano and picked up the flute.

"Bad idea, man."

But Dean had already blown into it. It made only a wispy, fluttery sound, but it was enough to awaken the animating force within. He let it go, and it floated there, adding its voice to the song.

"Now what?" called Sam, still playing, unable to break free of the cello's whim.

Dean shrugged, turning to look at the rest of the room. The candelabra was letting off a lot of light... No. The room was getting brighter. From the middle out, colour seeped back into the drab floor and walls. Dust faded and cobwebs melted into nothing. The furniture blossomed scarlet, the oak floors shone like honey and a blaze burst to life in the fireplace.

"What the hell?"

His own voice sounded dim and distant. His head whipped around as a woman entered, wearing a wide-bottomed dress of a past age. She swept over to a couch and sat down, a mournful expression incongruous with the song being played. Red curls framed her face, and she twirled one with a finger, chewing ruby lips.

Then a man strode in, sharp in a dark regency coat and combed, grey-streaked hair. He was broad shouldered but not very tall. Gunpowder burns scarred his cheeks. He paused behind the sofa the woman sat in, staring at the back of her head. He paid no heed to Sam and Dean.

Death echos, perhaps? If they were, they were exceptionally detailed. Dean couldn't remember seeing any with so much of their surroundings made apparent. And they were never visible this long.

"Angelina," said the man.

"Judge Corvus." The woman didn't turn around.

"Thomas Corvus?" Sam hissed, making Dean jump. "The last true owner of the house?"

"That would be my guess."

"Why are you here?" asked Thomas.

"Trust me, I have asked myself that many times this night," said Angelina, still twirling her hair.

Dean approached them slowly. They didn't even look up. Without a doubt this was nothing but a past event. When he reached for Thomas' arm, his hand when straight through him.

"Are you well?"

"As well as to be expected," she replied, moving green eyes over to the dance floor.

Thomas slowly set his left hand on the back of the sofa. Dean saw a wedding band glinting on his finger. Angelina's hands were unadorned.

"We agreed..."

"I know what we agreed," she said. "And I know what we want."

The judge's face was inscrutable, but a bead of sweat slithered down the back of his neck. He leaned down and took the hand playing with her hair. She stood, graceful, and let him guide her to the open space beyond. Shoes clacking over the polished dance floor, they began to move, just the two of them, as one.

Locked in their lonely dance, they did not see the shadow shift beyond the cracked doors to the library. But Dean did, and he saw the shadow disappear moments before he realized the music was changing. The flute had stopped, and one by one the cellos stopped as well. Sam dropped the bow and scrambled away before it could change its mind.

The memory began to fade. The wall sconces extinguished and colour bled from the walls and furnishings. Cobwebs stretched across every nook and dust coated every surface like ash. The piano continued to play away on its own.

And then the key changed. Lower, it was no longer merry and kind. It was dark. It was angry. And the song changed to fit.

The last of the vision to vanish were the two dancers, one married and the other not, an ancient scandal remembered only by a few instruments.

Sam and Dean stared at the piano, which continued to bang its own keys furiously, as though outraged by what it had seen. Papers shot off the music rack from a phantom wind, whipping around the room. The cellos seemed to quail against their stands. The flute rolled off the stool, pinging against the dais. The sheet music began to whip around the room, faster and faster, but neither Sam nor Dean could feel the wind. Still, they were threatened.

"Time to go?"

"Yep." Before they could take a step, they cried out and ducked as the piano bench threw itself at them. It hit the lit candelabra, knocking the candles flying, extinguishing the little flames.

"Out! Get out!"

Dean grasped Sam's sleeve, guiding him towards the door. Had they closed them after entering? He was pretty sure they hadn't.

The enraged piano continued to express its displeasure, the keys slamming down so hard they cracked. The prop holding up the lid snapped in half, and the lid smashed down, making the brothers jump. They tried to leave, but the doors had barred themselves shut.

"Find something to pry them open!" They cast their gazes about, but there was nothing, not even a poker near the fireplace.

The song became louder and louder, angrier and angrier, until, with a hatred only a vengeful ghost could covet, the grand piano flew through the air, flipping over and landing in the middle of the furnishings. Fibrous maple shattered, cords and cables recoiling with painful snaps, keys shooting across the floor like so many loose teeth.

The silence that followed was heavy, and the brothers stared at the destruction.

"That was new."

"Yeah." Sam let the air out of his lungs all at once. "...Have you noticed how much damage we've done to this house already?"

"Come on, this wasn't our fault, and neither was the kitchen—"

"Now you've done it."

Both men turned, facing the dance floor. A section of wall had been pushed out, revealing a secret door, likely used by the cleaning staff in its day. Now the same ghost girl they had spotted in the foyer was peering through it, holding a candle, eyes cold.

"Maestro Fortay won't like that you've broken his piano. Now you're in big trouble."

Sam raised a pacifying hand. "We didn't do this. We swear. Look. Can you help us? We, uh..." He chuckled uncomfortably. "We're kind of stumped. We found the message in the grandfather clock, but now—"

"You broke the piano. You're gonna be punished." Suddenly her voice changed. Became deeper, mature. "Do not linger." The girl vanished, closing the door behind her.

"Hey, hey!" Dean marched over to the door, but it was meant to be hidden and didn't have a knob on this side. "Come on!"

"We should look around," said Sam. "Maybe there's another riddle around here."

"We haven't even solved the one we got," Dean grumbled, returning to his brother's side.

"Well, what do we know?" Sam counted off on his fingers. "We're looking for someone. Don't know who yet, but it sounds like we need to in order to get out of here. Second, there's a curse on the Corvus family, or possibly the manor itself. Who placed it there clearly has a dark sense of humour. Third, I think we can assume that the love affair between Angelina and Thomas Corvus was a tipping point for somebody."

"Maybe the wife?" said Dean. "She would have just cause. Well, maybe not _just_ cause..."

"She had a right to be angry. You didn't happen to see who was spying through the door in the memory, did you?"

Dean shook his head. "Just a shadow."

"Hmph. Well the riddle told us to come here, and at least we learned something."

Grunting, Dean made his way back to the double doors to the library. He tried fruitlessly to pull them open as Sam fetched the oil lantern off the dais. As he came closer, Dean spotted strange shadows set into the white doors.

"Hey, check this out." He ran his fingers across the wood, feeling odd dips and rough edges. "Something's been carved here, and then repainted."

Sam squinted, then set the lantern down and walked across the room to the fireplace. He came back with a piece of charcoal and rubbed it along the wood, over the scratches.

Dean stood back as words began to take form, white against black. He waited for Sam to finish before reading.

 _You thought to fool me. You thought you could love another behind my back. You were wrong. Wrong. Wrong._

 _I can hear you laughing. You mock me from the shadows. But not for much longer. I will make you feel pain. Pain. Pain._

 _Oblivion to you. Oblivion to you all!_

Once he read the final word, they heard the first four notes of the Westminster chimes. The brothers had no time to ponder how, seeing as they had destroyed the grandfather clock, before they heard a fifth, deeper note, a note no clock was supposed to make.

The double doors blew open with such force, they slammed into the walls of the music room. The Winchesters recoiled, staring through the library, across the foyer, to the other side of the cloakroom, where another set of doors opened, slowly, into darkness. From the floor plan they had found, they knew this to be the parlour.

"Okay." Sam looked at his brother and shrugged. "Guess where we're going next."

In the foyer, they both turned to look at the clock they thought they had destroyed. It was standing against the wall once more, with its absent moon dial and thirteen hours, not so much as scratched. The hour hand hung around the eight, already lapped by its longer, faster companion.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

The brothers shared a look, then Sam made for the cloakroom across the way.

SMASH!

Jumping a mile, he spun around, to see the clock once more lying on its face, broken glass everywhere.

"Dude!"

"What? I had to." Dean grinned sheepishly, then led the way to the parlour, lantern held high.

Ω

Garth hummed and tapped the steering wheel, muttering the lyrics he knew as he turned off the main road, the going getting rough on the untended, tracked path towards Corvus Manor. His eyes flicked from side to side, taking in the barren trees, wary of deer or other forest critters but not expecting to see anything other than crows. That was how it was the last time he came here, less than a week ago.

And if animals didn't go somewhere, that was usually a sign that people shouldn't either.

Garth swallowed. At least he would have the Winchesters to help him with this one.

Not that he couldn't handle it himself. Really. He'd dealt with stranger, scarier things than this. But something about this case... It was like a large piece was missing. A factor they couldn't take into account because they didn't know what it was. So they couldn't prepare for it.

The radio stopped working. Garth turned it off.

The stiffs were definitely of interest. George Firandez's two amigos were undamaged but for a single cut each, on their hands, and yet the pathologists couldn't find any other reason for them to have died. Their hearts had simply stopped. That was rare but not unheard of, but for two perfectly healthy youths to die at the same time like that?

Garth was jerked around in his seat as he drove over potholes. "Yee-haw."

Then there was George's possession. Dean had evicted the spirit but that was far from solving the problem. If any more jokers go playing around the estate again, they too could be driven mad. And that, to Garth, was worse than death.

He felt relief tug the corners of his lips, seeing the gleam of the Impala's trunk through the trees. But as he drove around the bend, the faint smile evaporated.

Red and blue flashing lights of a single ghost cruiser dashed away the hope of a clean hunt. Garth pulled in behind the Impala, fumbling for his fake ID and opening the door at the same time. He forgot to unbuckle his seat belt in his haste to leap out. Had Sam and Dean gotten caught grave digging?

He managed to escape the truck without falling on his face, grabbing his cowboy hat before closing the door.

"Ranger Hank! Didn't expect to see you here."

"Detective Roberts." Garth recognized the man who had been put in head of the investigation, mentally cursing his misfortune. The man was quick, and Garth wasn't entirely sure if he believed the hunter was a ranger, a ranger following a "similar case" that had occurred in Texas.

He started forward around the Impala, staring at the back of the detective's head. Roberts was on the other side of his car, looking down at something near the gate of the Corvus estate.

"What brings you back here?" asked Garth.

"Could ask you the same."

Garth's next words got caught in his throat as he stepped around the ghost car, to behold Sam and Dean, both lying in the dirt, eyes open, not moving.

"Oh...oh my God..."

 _Sam? Dean? Dead? How?_

Detective Roberts turned to him, grim-mouthed, dark eyebrows coming together.

"You know these two?"

 _Pull it together. Pull it together!_

"I-I do. Th-they're a couple key witnesses helping me with this case. They, erm, we, think it's related to the incident in Texas."

 _They can't be dead. They're the Winchesters!_

"Don't know what happened. Just got here." Roberts knelt beside Sam and touched his neck. "Stone cold. No injuries that I can see." He picked up Sam's stiff hand. "'Cept for this here bandage."

"Like the other vics." Somehow Garth got his knobby knees to work, and he made his way over to Dean. Beside him was an axe and a dufflebag, no doubt filled with spirit and monster hunting supplies. "He's got a hand injury too."

Roberts turned his gaze skyward, counting the crows. "Strange. You'd think those buzzards would have swooped down and taken their eyes by now."

Garth swallowed thickly, willing lunch to stay where it was. "Maybe they don't like white meat."

Roberts ran a hand over his greying temple, now gazing at the back of the ranger's head. The axe had not escaped his attention.

"No doubt these two were trying to break into the estate," he said. "They weren't the first and they won't be the last. Now...I can see a couple shrimpy civilians getting spooked to death by something. But these two brutes?"

"No." Garth pursed his lips, shaking his head. " _No_. These two...nothing scares 'em. They're two of the bravest people I know."

Roberts watched Garth carefully, assessing his posture, his reaction. He must know these two stiffs better than he first let on. On a more personal level.

"I'll check their wheels," he said, but the ranger shook his head, pawing at the shorter vic's jacket in search of keys.

"I got it. You call in the c-coroners."

Robert's eyes narrowed but he went back to his cruiser, shaking his head. Just his luck he would get stuck with a weird one a week before his holiday.

"Dean." Garth blinked hard, willing the tears to retreat back into their glands. "Wake up, buddy." Dean's milky eyes continued to stare blindly into the darkening sky, face pallid and relaxed.

"They're on their way."

Garth stood, back to Roberts, trembling with sudden rage as he stared through the gate to Corvus Manor.

"There's something wrong with that house, detective. And we're gonna find out what."


	6. Parlour

**7:54**

* * *

~6~ Parlour

The parlour was blacker than pitch. Unlike every other room the hunters had been to, the curtains had been pulled over the windows, blocking the haze cast by the fog. As Dean stepped over the threshold, he felt as though he were walking off a cliff. The darkness swallowed the light from his oil lantern despite his efforts to brighten its glow.

Hardwood floors gave way to Persian rug. The air smelled musty, cut through with the fruity smell of a freshly brewed pot of tea. As he took a few more steps, Dean could make out the backs and arms of fauteuils.

He flinched as he felt something brush his sleeve, but it was only Sam, moving to something gleaming in the darkness.

"Give me a match."

Dean tossed the box at him, and Sam lit another candelabra, the first having been destroyed in the music room. As he waved out the match, Sam felt inside the box. Five left. He frowned and pocketed it. He had to be more careful – his flashlight would be of no use if a ghost came by.

But the extra light was welcome, and the brothers took a few steps further away from each other to broaden their visibility.

Sets of chairs stood at small round tables, how many tables they could only guess. And on each was a teapot and four teacups, complete with saucers, spoons and biscuit plates, coated in thick layers of dust and cobwebs. The hunters approached slowly, weary of anything restless, anticipation gnawing on their guts.

"I'll open some curtains." Sam padded over to where he knew the windows would be, eventually reaching the deep scarlet drapes. Grasping one, he threw it aside, only to frown.

Each pane of glass had been painted black. Only the thinnest lines of light near the grills came through, not nearly enough to have the foggy glow of the other rooms. He scratched at the paint, flakes crumbling away, catching under his nail. But it was thick and tenacious, and he didn't have all day.

Sam turned back, looking at his brother standing in the abyss of nothingness that was the parlour. He looked composed. Strong. He knew Dean was afraid but at least he had the knack for hiding it.

Clearing his throat, Sam began to look around, seeking any sort of clue as to what to do next.

Something was wrong. Dean's heart throbbed against his ribs, warning him. He searched the room, checking every table, every china cabinet, lifting the lantern high to see up the papered walls to the ceiling. He focused on spotting another message, but knew the next clue could take any form.

On the other side of the room, Sam was doing the same. He set his feet down carefully, and breathed as softly as he could. He lifted the candelabra to view a thick-framed painting of a pale horse cantering through a field. The horse's eyes were black and dripping, a dark, swollen tongue lolled between its lips, and a gash in its side revealed a squirming mass of maggots.

As he turned away, he saw movement in the darkness. His chest tightened and he recoiled, but then he forced himself forward a few steps, trying to capture it in the light. Nothing. Swallowing, Sam wandered this way and that. He could just barely see the pale ceiling.

So focused on his search, he walked into a table, knocking off a plate. It bounced off a chair and hit the floor but did not shatter.

"Sorry," Sam hissed, grimacing at his brother.

Dean shook his head, pretending the disturbance had only been mildly irritating. But then he frowned at the look that came over Sam's face. "What?"

Sam pointed, and Dean turned just in time to see something drift away into darkness. Hand tightening around the lantern, he followed, moving steadily until he caught up. He flinched at the sight of two pale feet, suspended above head height. The edges of a tattered dress hung around them. Silent, the legs floated on, leaving the ring of light. He stepped forward again, but there was nothing to follow.

He felt a chill ripple up his spine and he whirled around, which startled Sam and in turn startled Dean again. He shook himself angrily. The ghosts weren't acting as they're supposed to!

"Let's get out of here."

"Dean, wait." Sam stopped by a table near the middle of the room. A line creased his brow as he brought the candelabra closer to a deep-bellied, tall-spouted teapot. Through the coat of dust he could make out painted lavenders and gold vines. There was nothing special about this particular teapot, as it was like every other teapot in the room. Except this teapot had steam curling out of the spout.

He gave Dean a posh look. "Care fo' a spot o' tea, luv?"

"Don't ever do that again." Dean manoeuvred around the tables to join him. He held his hand an inch away from the teapot, feeling the heat. "Please say we don't have to..."

Sam pulled out a chair and sat down. Dean reluctantly did the same, keeping his eyes overhead for the floating, barefooted spectre while his brother stared at the teapot some more. He wasn't sure how drinking tea was supposed to be a clue, but he turned two cups upright anyway and wrapped the pot's handle with a cloth before picking it up. He managed to pour the amber drink into the two cups without making a mess, then he set the pot back down on its tray.

The Winchesters gazed at the steaming tea before them.

"Garth totally owes us for this one," mumbled Dean. Sam pursed his lips and nodded curtly, before they both lifted their cups, tipped them at each other, and drank.

They finished as quickly as they could, despite the heat, and set the cups down.

"Guh," Dean groaned. "Bitter."

"Okay, now what?" Sam glanced around, hoping to spot another message.

 _SMASH!_

Both brothers leaped to their feet, Sam drawing his knife, Dean his revolver, spinning towards the source of the racket. It had sounded like a table had been smashed, and now something, or rather, someone, was rummaging around. No, struggling. And there was definitely two of them.

By their muffled grunts they were either gagged or trying to be silent. They pushed aside chairs and tables, sounding like they were lying on the floor. One was making choking sounds, like the other was strangling it. And then the other spoke.

"Thou. Shalt. Not. Kill."

Before Sam and Dean could advance on the unseen fight, there was a wet slice and a gargle, then a thud. The choking sounds stopped, replaced by gasping.

With the unmistakable sound of a body being dragged across the floor, the Winchesters nearly knocked tables flying as they hastened towards the sounds. But by the time they got there, the ghost had faded, leaving behind a smashed table and scattered chairs.

"A death echo?" said Dean.

"A memory. Like in the music room." Sam knelt, pawing through the destruction. "The question is, who killed who?"

"And why?" Dean held the lantern up, watching for the floating spectre. If it was a clue, it was very evasive. If it was a threat, he wanted to see it coming.

"Hey, check this out." Sam reached under a nearby table and picked up a crucifix on a gold chain. It was small and simple, the tiny mould of Christ worn to almost nothing.

Dean took it. "Figure that was there the whole time?"

"Dunno. Possible the spirits left it. They did just break a table. And look, blood stains." Sam brought the candelabra closer, revealing dark blotches in the carpet. More was sprayed on the surrounding furniture.

"So we've got an affair, and now a murder. And...wait." Sam blinked, remembering something. "I found a journal in the room I woke up in. I couldn't read most of it, but it mentioned blood being discovered in the parlour, and a missing Pastor George, or Gregory, or something."

Dean looked up at him, crucifix dangling from his hand. "Figure this was his?"

"Be my guess. Doesn't tell us who murdered him."

Dean shrugged one shoulder. "Might have been the good judge. Maybe Gregory was the one who spotted him and Angelina in the music room, and Thomas Corvus found out."

There was a sound of rasping breath, feminine and sickly. The hunters shared a look.

"Well I suppose we've gotten what we needed here."

"Yep. Time to go."

"Yep." Dean stood, eyes flicking around, but the darkness seemed to close in on them, greedily sucking in the light.

He followed Sam backwards, gun in one hand, lantern in the other, eyes roaming ceaselessly. He heard the raspy moan again, and was reminded of the Grudge.

 _It's not the Grudge. The Grudge doesn't exist. It's a spirit and can be repelled like a spirit._

So carefully did he move, he did not notice the space spreading between him and his brother.

" _Dean!_ "

He whirled around, light catching the pale feet hovering overhead. He raised his eyes higher, and could barely make out the face in the gloom. Dark eyes, dark mouth, dark hair. Even with the lantern, he could make out no more detail.

Sam's voice sounded far away. Dean could only stare up at her, gun forgotten, trying to figure out what she was. The spell was broken as she screamed – a horrible, tearing sound – but he was too slow to raise his gun before she swooped down on him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and lifting him up into the air like he was nothing. Both gun and lantern fell from his hands as he thrashed, but then he was flung away, straight into the wall, where she pinned him with an unseen force.

"Dean!"

"I can't move, Sam!"

"Where is she?" Armed only with a knife, Sam turned around and around, not letting any flank remain unguarded for more than a few seconds. Dean tried to move an arm or leg, but the spirit was too strong.

"Sam, behind you!"

Sam ducked. Pale fingers clawed at where his head had just been. The spectre flew by, coming to float before Dean. He still couldn't make out any features clearly, as though she were on the other side of frosty glass.

The pressure pinning Dean to the wall made it difficult to breathe. He gasped, glaring at the spectre. "Well? What do you want?"

She cocked her head, then raised a single hand. Her fingers ended in sharp, blackened points. She pointed her index finger, and he stared at it, heart hammering, as it rose past his chin, nose, and eyes, stopping at his forehead. When it touched him, an intense cold pierced his skull. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't speak. But he could feel the agony as the pointed finger slowly slid into his head like a knife through butter. So strange was the feeling of his thoughts being brushed aside, as though another consciousness was pushing his into a back room—

Suddenly his vision was filled with light, and the spectre dissipated with a shriek as the lantern swung through her legs. There was a thud as Sam landed on his feet, having jumped to be able to reach her. Dean thawed just as the pressure pinning him vanished, and he landed on all fours, grunting. He felt Sam grab his shoulder.

"You alright?"

"Yep, yep. Just dandy." Dean stood stiffly, rubbing the chill from his hands. He felt his forehead. It was cold but undamaged.

"What is that thing?"

"Dunno, but I'm not waiting for it to come back." He grabbed up his revolver and took the lantern back from Sam before following him out the door.

* * *

 **I'm sorry to all those Americans whose eyes twitched from my spelling of parlour. *Dean-grin***


	7. Crucifix

**8:16**

* * *

~7~ Crucifix

With the parlour doors safely shut behind them, the Winchesters trotted back to the foyer. As they expected, the thirteen hour grandfather clock was back against the wall, whole and ticking. The minute hand was near three, the hour drifting towards nine.

"It didn't chime this time," said Sam, staring at it thoughtfully.

Dean shrugged. "Maybe it wasn't supposed to."

"Or maybe we missed something."

They shared a look.

"I'm not going back in there."

"But we don't know what we're supposed to do next!" Sam protested.

"We combed that place, Sammy! I didn't see any messages, did you?"

Sam released a breath through his nose, frustrated. Then he unfolded the map of the ground floor, taken from the grandfather clock, and inspected it. Dean meanwhile pulled Pastor Gregory's gold cross necklace from his pocket, lifting it to eye height.

"...Hey, Sam?"

"What?"

"There are words engraved on the back of this."

He perked. "What does it say?"

Dean had to squint, holding the lantern where he could see the words in relief. They ran from the top of the cross to the bottom, and on either arm was a Roman numeral.

"' _The trout milk moves your tree..._ ' That doesn't sound right." He squinted more. " _'The tooth will make you flee..._ ' No—"

"Give me that." Sam snatched the necklace, peering at it closely. "It says ' _The truth will make you free_.'"

"Of course it says that!" Dean grumbled. "And what about the numerals?"

"It's eight and...thirty two." He stared off, thinking. "A date, maybe? Month and year?"

"Why would there be a date on the back of a crucifix?"

Sam shrugged as he checked every inch of the necklace, looking for more clues. Dean shifted impatiently, then blinked. "Of course."

"Of course what? Dean?" Sam hastened after his brother, who had turned on his heel and strode into the library. Its ceiling was lost to darkness even with their combined lights, and the towers of books, stacked to precarious heights, cast eerie shadows as the hunters moved through the room.

"It's not a date. I think it's scripture." Dean began to scan the shelves, and Sam started from the other side of the library, searching for a bible. Perhaps because of weariness, he found it difficult to focus on the spines; it was almost like the gilded letters were swimming around.

After several tense minutes, Dean voiced his frustration. "There are hundreds of books here! And they don't even open." He had pulled one off the shelf and flipped back the cover. The pages were all clumped together.

"Books were a luxury," said Sam, finishing a line of spines and straightening to scan the next shelf up. "You have to cut the pages apart to read them. Owning books was a big thing – owning uncut ones was even bigger."

Dean pulled a few more tomes out of place, all of them uncut. "What the hell was the point of buying books if they didn't even _read_ them?"

"Exactly."

He flashed Sam an odd look, then plunked the books down on the floor. "I'll never understand rich people."

Scores more books were regarded and discarded. Their spines all started to look the same, titles swirling together. Sam had to rest his eyes, turning away and rubbing them until his vision blotched black. When he could see again, he found himself staring at the green armchair in the corner. There was an open book left on its arm. Earlier he hadn't been able to see what it was from a distance. Now he could make out a white cross on a black leather cover.

"Dean."

His brother met him at the chair. Sam set the candelabra on the floor and picked up the bible. Some of the pages sighed and fell out, exhaling dust. He turned the book upright and slowly flipped to the front. "Eight and thirty two..." He didn't know which Gospel, so he started from the beginning. Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not fit. So that left—

"John. Here." Sam carefully turned the pages until they were headed with John 8, then ran his finger down the page. "Twenty eight, twenty nine..." He turned the next page, only for a scrap of paper to fall out, fluttering to the floor. As Dean knelt to pick it up, Sam read, at thirty two, " _'And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.'_ "

"Bingo." Dean straightened, grinning. "Next clue."

Sam was still staring at the phrase, frowning lightly. "The truth. I suppose the 'truth' pertains to what happened here. But who's to be made free?"

"The Corvuses, be my guess," said Dean. "Who else?"

"Us."

Silence hung between them. Sam closed the bible with a dull _thud_. "Read the clue."

Dean carefully unfolded the sheet of parchment.

" _In the wake of murder cold,  
_ _Hell's tongues burned higher.  
_ _'Twould be the first blade of many,  
_ _And condemn all to the pyre._ "

"Great, more rhymes." Sam rolled his eyes.

" _The speaker of truth is here no more,  
_ _But the truth shall endure.  
_ _To be borne by any and all,  
_ _Or death you will procure._ "

"Not very good ones either."

" _Go forth and seek what might be ours  
_ _Or yours by fated whim,  
_ _For all our hopes, yours and mine,  
_ _And all our fallen kin_.

 _Beware the Beast."_

Dean checked the back of the paper before briefly reading the lines again in his head. "Well this is useless. It basically told us to do what we're already doing."

"Except it's telling us to discover the truth of what happened here," said Sam softly. "That it's our way out. Everyone's way out."

"Then what's this beast they mentioned?"

Sam shook his head slowly and set the bible down on the chair. In doing so he spotted a glint of gold tucked between the cushion and the arm. "Hel-lo." He pulled it out, letting it rest in his palm. "A key."

"A key to wh—?"

Dean flinched as the Westminster chimes sounded from the foyer. But unlike before, no doors burst open to let them know where to go next.

Sam inspected the key. It seemed too bright and polished to have been sitting there for over a hundred and fifty years. He imagined it would work on a desk, or master bedroom. He pocketed it.

"I guess we should test some doors."

He knelt to pick up the candelabra, but before he could even touch it, it lifted into the air on its own. It hovered at chest height, the trio of flames flicking playfully.

"Um..."

Dean frowned at it, the light reflecting in his eyes. He wasn't cold. Not cold enough for there to be a spirit nearby.

"Grab it."

Sam raised his hand to do so, but the candelabra swayed out of reach. When he lunged at it, it darted away again. He chased it into the foyer, Dean on his heels.

"Sam, wait!" He raced out of the library after him before sliding to a halt, lantern swinging.

The younger hunter was at the bottom of one set of stairs, staring up at the candelabra. It was hovering over the balcony, as though waiting for them to catch up.

"Now what?" Sam growled in frustration, glaring at the candles.

"Sam, I don't think it's avoiding you."

"...You think it's guiding us?"

"Well look at it! It only moves when you get close enough."

Sam glanced distrustfully at the steps. Last time he tried to climb them they had turned into a slide. Cautious, he stepped onto the first stair. Then the next, and the next. Dean waited at the bottom, as though to warn Sam if he saw any changes to the staircase. But Sam made it to the top without incident.

"It's safe. I guess."

Dean was quicker but no less careful, and then the brothers watched as the candelabra drifted left down the hall, to the east wing. The pod of light cast a spidery shadow on the floor beneath the candelabra, and illuminated the deep red walls and yellowed ceiling. It paused a few metres away, waiting patiently. Sam stepped cautiously after it, letting Dean cover his back. At least without the candles at his side, it was easier to see further ahead.

The candelabra kept going, passing mutilated paintings, hall tables with empty vases, and closed doors. Some were boarded shut.

"Hey, Dean, how long do you think we've been here?"

"...Who knows how long we were asleep. But a couple hours, at least."

"Yeah." Sam paused at a landscape faintly lit by Dean's lantern. There were three children sitting around a picnic in a golden field, a white shack in the background. A shadow had stretched over the children, its caster an undefined shape on the horizon. Sam kept walking.

The candelabra turned a corner and continued to ignore every door in the hall. A few were ajar, but when Dean stuck his head through, he saw nothing of importance. He would check again later, just in case.

Finally, the hall ended. The candelabra continued forward and slipped in through an open door. Before the brothers could reach it, it slammed closed.

Sam already had the gold key out by the time he reached the door. He inserted it a second before he realized it was too small. Frowning, he rattled the knob.

"Doesn't fit."

"Here." Dean nudged him aside, fishing his pockets for the rose-handled key he'd acquired from the bedroom he'd woken up in. It fit inside the hole, but he couldn't turn it. "Alright, stand back." Dean pushed at Sam until he backed off, then raised a leg and kicked the door with the flat of his foot.

 _Bang!_

Sam rolled his eyes as his brother staggered, trying not to fall. "Solid doors, Dean."

"I know that!" he snapped, even though he'd clearly forgotten that little fact. "Just find the damn key."

"Maybe it's around here somewhere." Sam pulled out his small flashlight and clicked it on, casting a silvery orb against the door. He traced it around the outside, and felt along the top frame, in case it had been left up there, out of a child's reach. His fingers found only dust. "I'm gonna have a look around."

The two doors on either side of them were locked, and his key didn't fit them either. He started back up the hall, entering any rooms on the left side with open doors. He could hear Dean checking the rooms across the way.

There were bedrooms mostly, but he rummaged around what must have been a study, and in yet another room full of toys. In the latter, he took more time, out of curiosity's sake more than anything.

A large rocking horse sat in the corner, a sock monkey in a top hat slouched on its back and surrounded by towers of building blocks. Sitting on a shelf was a row of rag dolls, tin soldiers and a train engine. Jumping jacks hung on the walls like mutilated spiders. In the middle of the floor, on a low wooden table, was a child's tea set, the porcelain guests slumped over tiny teacups.

To Sam's right was a chest, no doubt a toy box. He lifted the lid, wincing at the creak, to reveal more forgotten toys. Lying on top, face down, was a grey wool rabbit with a wad of cotton for a tail. Sam picked it up and turned it over. Silky ears fell back and dark glass eyes gleamed up at him. It might have been cute if not for the set of human teeth that had been sewn into its mouth.

At the sound of giggling he dropped the rabbit and whirled around. His heart stumbled in his chest when he saw the wall of the door was filled with clown dolls. Jongleurs, harlequins, jesters and fools, some smiling, some weeping, all looking like they could strangle him in his sleep.

But the biggest clown was standing near a chiffonier, a toothy grin on his face, holding the giggling wind-up toy.

"Dammit, Dean!"

Dean chuckled and set the clown back on the dresser. "Oh, man, the look on your face!"

Sam had a hard time not looking at the clowns lining the shelves. It was like some sick fascination and he couldn't help but creep himself out. He thought he'd gotten better. Guess not.

"Screw you."

Dean chortled and picked up the clown again, winding it up for another spurt of giggles. Sam snatched it from his hand, chucked it into the toy chest and slammed the lid down. He pushed past Dean, into the hall. "Jerk!"

"Bitch."

The giggling could still be heard from inside the chest, and Sam hastily made for the next accessible room, three doors down.

This looked to be a day room for older children. Girls, if the vanity desk was anything to go by. His beam of light rebounded off its oval mirror, briefly lighting up the curtains.

Dean followed him in, out of places to search on his side of the hallway. Sam kept throwing him suspicious looks, just in case he'd decided to amuse himself by bringing another clown doll. But Dean seemed focus on finding the key.

"Check the dresser, would you?"

Sam moved to obey, stepping over discarded needle-point projects and yarn balls. He tried the drawers, but they were sticky. Putting the flashlight in his mouth, pointed down so he could see what he was doing, he used both hands to jerk the top drawer open. Scissors, a few scraps of paper, a little toy man. He tried the next drawer, which had bits of clothing and a spool of thread. He dug around but found no key.

He checked the next two drawers, frustration swelling at the fruitless search. He shoved the bottom one closed and stood, glaring at himself in the mirror. The flashlight fell out of his mouth and he blinked.

"Um...Dean?" Sam glanced over his shoulder, rubbed his eyes, then looked again. He still saw a bright background in his reflection, as though it were daytime. The walls were a cheery pink and there wasn't a speck of dust or smear of stain anywhere. There was even a potted fern just within view. And then there was Sam, standing in a neat black suit of a different age, with coattails and shiny gold buttons over a spotless white shirt. His trousers were higher up than what was in fashion now and his hair was greased and tied back.

"Dean!"

"What? What?" Dean came to stand beside him, looking into the mirror. He looked like himself—flannel, canvas and all—incongruous with the background. A line creased his brow.

"You seeing this?" Sam almost touched the mirror. His reflection almost touched him.

"...You alright, Sammy?"

"Dude, _look!_ "

"Yeah, your face has always been like that. Sorry."

How could Dean not see what he was seeing? "That isn't me!"

He rolled his eyes and walked away. "Hate to break it to you, but it is."

"Dean!" Sam glanced at him, then back at the mirror. He flinched. No longer did he see himself in butler uniform with a bright background. He saw his own alarmed face, in his jean jacket and flannel shirt. But he didn't feel like he was wearing a jean jacket and flannel shirt. Looking down, he saw himself in the uniform, complete with coattails and hiked trousers. His shoes pinched and it felt like his collar was shaped to keep his head up or else it would strangle him.

He turned around, to view the same day room, now illuminated by daylight and impeccably neat.

"Dean?"

He turned back to the mirror, but it was just like a regular mirror again.

"Crap."

* * *

"Sam?" Dean frowned. Sam was no longer staring at his reflection like an awestruck bird. That man could move fast and quietly when he wanted to. Dean poked his head out the door. "Hey, Sam!"

Silence. He started to check other rooms, his search becoming more frantic with every beat of his heart.

"Sam! Sammy!"

* * *

With the absence of the brothers, the day room fell still, as it had been for decades. But this time, something awoke.

It pulled out of the mirror, which oozed around it like mercury, and rolled off the dresser onto the floor in a colourless, amorphous heap. It began to take the shape of the last thing it had seen – a tall man with long hair and strange clothes. It could not speak, it could not feel, but it had a mind, and it was dark.


	8. Mirror

**8:45**

* * *

~8~ Mirror

 _This can't be happening. This can't be real!_

Sam was no stranger to time travel, although it wasn't something he enjoyed or completely understood. He wasn't even sure he had actually done so. But the evidence was under his feet and on his body. He was standing in the same spot a hundred fifty years in the past, wearing the threads of a butler.

Why? Was it a clue? Or had something hostile caught hold of him?

Swallowing, Sam stuck his head out the door, peering left and right. There was no one there, but he could hear life around the corner. Voices, laughter, a little music. He was in uniform but he probably wouldn't want to be spotted. Someone was bound to notice he didn't belong there. He wouldn't even have the same accent.

He had to get back. And to do that he probably had to find out why he was here.

Sam slipped out of the room and turned right, towards the door the candelabra had led them to. Was it unlocked now? Would he find out what they needed in this dimension?

He was passing the door he knew led to the study when he heard voices. They came too easily through the solid wood door, as though it wanted him to eavesdrop. He pressed his ear to it, detecting two men beyond.

"I swear the horse did not suddenly go _mad_ and throw Katrine. That mare was as gentle as a lamb. Something scared her, I tell you!"

"Keep your voice down! These walls have ears."

"Inspector Richard is a fool to think Katrine had no enemies. We're her family – we know who hates us all! And if they could kill her, they might as well have killed her boy too."

"You can't prove that. Here, have a drink."

There was a pause in speech and the clink of glass against glass.

"Tom was the best swimmer in the county. There's no way he could have drowned in that pond on his own."

"The doc figured he got a cramp, became exhausted and simply couldn't keep his head above water anymore. There was no sign of trauma, Jack."

"How can you be so calm about this? A sister and nephew are dead, and now three more kids are sick!"

Sam rummaged through his memories, trying to conjure the Corvus family tree in his mind's eye. Jack and Katrine were two of Judge Thomas' four children. One of his grandchildren was dead, and three were ill. On top of that, the local pastor, who might have been the one to catch Judge Thomas cheating on his wife, had been murdered. The year must be 1844, when the madness of Corvus Manor took wing.

"Have you seen Mother lately? It's her I'm worried about."

"No. And Father won't speak to me. It's all this grief. Even the staff are quiet."

"Doesn't matter how much money you have. Death touches all."

Suddenly the voices became muffled. Sam wiggled a finger in his ear and tried to listen to more. But he'd heard what the manor wanted him to hear, and it was time to move on.

Then, footsteps.

There was nowhere to hide. Eyes wide, he frantically thought about what he could say when the person coming around the corner demanded to know who he was.

It was a maid. She strode past him, bearing a tray of soup broth in three bowls, without so much as a nod of acknowledgement. Sam watched her walk to the end of the hall, to the door he and Dean had tried to go through, which, he noticed in surprise, was opening.

Another maid stepped out, carrying a basket of linens. She looked sombre, almost weepy, her head down. She sniffled.

"How are they?" the broth maid asked softly. Sam moved closer to hear.

The other shook her head. "Worse. They're seeing things now. Not only in their sleep anymore."

"The poor dears. Three in a week. And without Pastor Gregory to ask for God's help..."

"We'll have to hope our prayers are enough. And keep the other children away. They can sleep downstairs in the spare rooms."

"Mrs Kenningsworth has ordered all their toys to be burned, just in case it's spreading that way."

Sam frowned. Unless new toys had been bought in later times, none of them had been burned.

"Has Susana shown up yet? It's been days. She said she had something to tell me..."

"Regarding what?"

"I don't know. But she seemed rather nervous, last I spoke with her. Then Master Thomas set her to do some errands in town."

"If she went through the woods..."

Silence hung between the two maids, as if they were imaging whatever might be in the forest around the estate. They had yet to acknowledge or even notice Sam's presence.

Music could still be heard from downstairs.

"How could they be celebrating at a time like this?" hissed the broth woman. "First with Lady Katrine's accident, and her son's drowning barely a moon earlier—"

"Something is wrong with this house. Can you feel it, Yvonne? Ever since the pastor went missing."

"They say tragedy strikes in threes. Pray this will soon be over."

"The doctor will be here again this afternoon." The maid with the linen shifted the basket to a better position. "I will have these burned immediately. There's nothing like fire to purge evil." She opened the door for the soup maid, and didn't so much as bat an eye when Sam went through after her.

* * *

"Dammit, Sam, where are you?"

Dean's fear was masked by the anger in his voice. He checked every room he could on the second floor, including the bedroom where he'd regained consciousness, in the west wing. Along the way he came upon a door with a handle at chest height. He opened it, to find stairs leading up to darkness.

"Sam?"

Holding the lantern high, he began to ascend the wooden stairs, tentative, like they might collapse at any moment. He kept his eyes straight ahead, expecting to see another door any second... Any second now...

He must have climbed enough stairs to bypass two floors by the time he stopped, confused. He was positive this part of the building only had three stories, and he had been on the second.

When he turned back, he was shocked to see the doorway just a few steps down. It was like he hadn't climbed anywhere at all. But there was a burn in his legs and his heart rate was up, so he'd definitely been moving.

He left the stairway and closed the door, shaking his head. No sense in hurting himself trying to figure that one out. He turned his back and marched down the hall.

"Sam? Stop fooling around!"

He was back at the balcony overlooking the foyer. He set his hands on the banister, looking down. Sam must be on the ground floor somewhere.

 _Please not the parlour, please not the parlour_...

Dean felt tingles between his shoulder blades. He spun towards the east wing hall, reaching for his gun, lantern high.

"Sam!"

His brother was standing there in the dark, stiff and expressionless.

"You asshat! The hell have you been?" Dean wanted to throw something at him, despite his relief. "I was looking everywhere! What...? Sam?"

There was something...wrong. It was his eyes. They seemed too dark, the lantern's reflections too distinct. And his face looked off, but Dean couldn't quite put a finger on why. Wasn't that smear of dirt on the other cheek before?

"Hey, buddy..."

Sam blinked. Took a step closer. Dean saw something gleaming in his hand. His left hand.

"You're not Sam."

It smiled, toothy, marauding, and definitely not like his baby brother. From its throat came a insectile, chittering sound. It stepped closer, and Dean was able to see what was wrong with its eyes. They were twin orbs of mirror, reflecting everything they saw, including the alarm on Dean's face.

He slowly reached behind him, other hand holding the lantern out front, going for his revolver. "Just stay back."

Not-Sam lifted the object in its hand – a large broken piece of mirror, shaped like a claw. Its palm was slick with dark blood, not seeming to feel the pain. Then, chattering like an angry cicada, the thing lunged at him, slashing at his throat.

* * *

Sam heard a click as the door was locked behind him, and paused. He might have to follow the linen maid to see where she kept the key. But perhaps this other maid had one of her own.

He became aware of the first smell in this mirror world. The pungent, unmistakable stench of sickness. He wasn't in an infirmary like he'd supposed, but a large bedroom. There were multiple beds, fit for young children, each with a footlocker and dresser. Toys and games were neatly stacked on shelves or cabinets. At the far side of the room was a single closet door.

Sam scanned the beds, quickly finding the three occupied by kids. He could see the distress on their faces, smell the sweat and fear, hear their plaintive mewls. They didn't seem to be conscious.

The maid had knelt beside one of the children, a little girl, and was stroking her brow. The bowls of broth sat forgotten on a dresser.

"There, there, sweet pea. The doctor will be here soon." She began to hum a lullaby, but it fell on deaf ears.

Sam's heart went out to the kids, even though there was nothing he could do, nothing at all. He knew they were going to die, taken by this mysterious illness. But he could set them free. And he would.

He was the only one to hear a soft click. He turned towards the far end of the room, to see the closet door slowly easing open. He blinked, then blinked again as a thin tendril of fog seeped out of it. He wanted to shout, to warn the maid, but he discovered he could not speak. And even if he could, this was the past – he could change nothing.

The tendril – too thin and wispy to be demon smoke – drifted around the room, stopping here and there, sniffing like a curious pup. It swirled closer to the maid and children. Impulsively, Sam tried to stomp on it. But it continued on its way, not the last bit rumpled.

It pooled near the maid, who did not turn around, then undulated over to a shelf of toys behind her. It nudged a small ball off and let it hit the floor, before following it down and nosing it around.

Sam watched helplessly as the ball was positioned just so behind the maid. When she stood and stepped back on it, she fell, and fell hard. Her temple contacted the corner of a footlocker, and she moved no more.

His teeth were clenched so hard his jaw hurt. He watched the tendril of smoke swirl gleefully over the maid's open, sightless eyes before making a beeline for the closet. Sam raced after it, but was too slow to stop the door from slamming in his face. He grabbed the knob and yanked it open.

It was small, considering how many children used this room. He grabbed fistfuls of coats and shirts hanging from the bar and tore them out, flinging them to the floor. He pounded on the back wall, expecting to hear a hollow sound. But it was solid.

Cursing, he pulled everything else out of the closet, too, but the smoke was gone. And he couldn't even figure out what it was.

He fumed for a while, then shook himself. He couldn't possibly have done anything anyway. And at least he knew one thing – if he could open a closet, he could acquire a key to this room. He wasn't completely ethereal.

But he was disappointed to find no such key on the dead maid. He would have to seek out the one with the linen basket.

Casting one last regretful, pitying glance at the children, Sam made for the exit, and tried to open it. His hand went through the knob.

"O-o-okay." Then he tried to do what was natural in such a situation – walk through the door. He was surprised and more than a little miffed when he bounced off, nose smarting. Now he was really confused.

* * *

Dean ducked and spun out of the creature's slashing attack, dropping the lantern in order to block the rebound with his forearm. Not-Sam jumped back before Dean could grapple it, then lunged again, feinting with its blade of mirror before striking with the heel of its hand. The blow caught Dean on the cheek, and he staggered back, temper flaring.

Whatever this thing was – ghost, demon maybe – it had Sam's skill, speed, and strength. And he didn't much appreciate it using them against him.

"Get out of him, you son of a bitch."

Ignoring his own poor choice of words, Dean stepped forward with an uppercut, aiming for its jaw. It dodged before trying to return the favour, but Dean deflected it, spun and slammed his elbow into its throat. It barely reacted, other than to stagger back two paces before lurching forward with its mirror shard. He managed to kick it aside before it impaled his leg, but as his fist swung around, the creature's head bobbed back for only a second before darting forward, sinking its teeth into his wrist.

"Ow! Bastard!" Tearing free, he kicked it again, forcing it back and winning a few seconds. His hands came up, ready to strike or block, and Not-Sam just stood there, grinning, teeth stained with blood. Dean's blood.

"You're really gross, y'know that?"

It chittered like an insect.

He thought about his gun. One shot and the thing would (might) die. But what if it was possessing his brother? He couldn't risk it.

"Sammy, if you're in there, I could use a little help from the inside."

It made more clicking sounds and charged, shard flashing in the dim light. Dean dodged and swung a fist up into the thing's ribs. It screamed at the same time as Dean, who felt like he had punched through a window. His fist came away bloody, a piece of mirror embedded in his knuckle. He plucked it out, releasing a ribbon of scarlet.

What _was_ this monster?

Not-Sam spun around in a fury, shard slashing, and Dean ducked in the nick of time. It didn't seem affected by the blow, but at least Dean now knew it wasn't his brother.

"Time to put this bitch down." He drew his gun, but before he could aim, the creature punched him so hard, he slammed into the wall and fell to his knees. Stunned, he felt the revolver leave his fingers. "No!"

He tried to reach for it, only for Not-Sam to kick him in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him. Gasping, he fell on his side, and had just started to take in air when it stepped on his neck, cutting off his airway. Sense blocked by panic, he grasped its shoe, trying to push it away.

Not-Sam hissed triumphantly and pressed harder before leaning over, until the point of the shard in its hand was an inch before Dean's eye. He could see his own fear reflected in it, then again and again in the creature's mirror eyes.

It would blind him, and then did God knew what to him.

 _No. Not today._

His legs came up on either side of Not-Sam and hooked around its middle. It hissed in surprise as he forced it to the floor, and as the foot left his neck he wormed free of the creature, moving back towards the balcony and sucking in air.

Not-Sam chattered and clicked as it stood, gnashing bloody teeth. It was more weary now, but no less determined.

Then Dean spotted his gun, grey in the gloom, against the wall. His eyes quickly flicked back to the monster, not wanting it to notice the weapon.

"Come on, hot stuff. Who's your daddy?"

The thing really didn't know how to wear Sam's face, contorting it to something ugly and savage. It was done playing. As it lunged, so did he, right hand catching its left wrist, twisting it around before it could stab him. He sent it sprawling to the floor and dove for his gun.

He heard it approach just as he rolled onto his back. The gun came up, aiming for its head—

BANG!

Not-Sam shrieked, clutching the side of its face. Its cheek and jaw had shattered from the blast, colourless slime oozing out of the gaping hole, which was jagged with broken mirror. The more it shrieked, the more its face spider-webbed with cracks. The shrieks became an angry hiss. Dean could barely recognize it as his brother.

His lip curled up, gun still aimed. "You are one ugly motherf—"

BANG!

Not-Sam's head snapped back, as though its neck were broken, chunks of mirror and goop spraying against the banister. All sounds stopped, and the creature collapsed.

Slowly, Dean stood, gun trained on the monster. He stepped closer and kicked its leg. No response.

Grunting in satisfaction, Dean clicked the safety on and slipped the revolver back into his waistband, before wincing and looking at his injured hand. "Ow."

* * *

 _Think, think, think! It's a riddle, so solve it!_

Sam had tried repeatedly to walk through the door or undo the lock. Neither proved successful. Even trying to touch the lock and then walking through didn't work. The house had him where it wanted, although whether it was to trap him or to give him a clue as to what to do next, he did not know.

The more he glared at the offending door, the more angry he got. So when it flickered between being white and spotless to grey and pitted, he flinched.

 _What the hell?_

It was white again, but suddenly he had an idea.

He stared at the lock, trying to picture what it would look from a hundred and fifty years of neglect. The bleached paint would crack and curl. Insects would burrow into the wood. The hardware would lose its lustre and start to seize. As he imagined it, he began to see it.

He might have closed his eyes, or he might have been staring at the lock in his own time. Either way, when he next reached for it, he could touch it, unlock it, and open the door.

Yes!

He stepped back into the hallway, which was still of the past. But Sam wasn't deterred, racing for the day room and its dimension-bending mirror. When he stopped in front of it, he saw himself, in his jean jacket and flannel shirt, grease-less hair and comfortable shoes.

He stared at himself, willing to go back, and suddenly felt a surge, as though he were in an elevator but moving forward. He blinked, and when he next looked, he still saw himself as he should be, but this time, he _was_ as he should be.

"Dean!" he cried, rushing out of the room. "Dean!"

* * *

"Sam?" Dean turned from the balcony and the corpse of Not-Sam, tense and reaching for his gun. What if it was another mirror man?

But he could tell this was his Sammy, from the way he moved to that smear of dirt on the correct cheek.

"Where the hell have you been?" he demanded.

"I figured it out. I— _Dean!_ "

The elder hunter whirled around just as Not-Sam sprang up at him, jaw hanging loose, craters in its forehead and cheek. It clicked and chattered angrily, and would have brought Dean down had the man not grappled it, spun it around and given it a heave over the balcony. It hissed once before smashing on the ground floor, exploding like a dropped mirror.

As Dean stared down at it, panting, Sam joined him at the railing.

"Rest in pieces." Dean wiped a gooey smear off his hand onto his jeans as Sam turned to him with wide eyes.

"What the hell was that?"

"Beats me."

As the Winchesters returned to the east wing, the shards of mirror scattering the foyer floor melted into small dollops of dark mess. They quivered, then fell still.


	9. Sleep

**8:55**

* * *

~9~ Sleep

It took all of Garth's skills of persuasion to stop the pathologists from chopping Sam and Dean into mincemeat as soon as they got to the morgue. First of kin had to be notified, not to mention "Hank's" bureau in Texas. Sam and Dean were two key witnesses, after all.

That last thing was going to be harder to pull off. Garth was the new Bobby, and he couldn't be his own boss _and_ Ranger Hank. Fortunately, on the way back to town, Garth had managed to contact another hunter to be on standby, ready to take the call.

 _This is a sticky one, no mistake_. Garth stood by the gurneys bearing the two brothers, who had been stripped and covered in white sheets. Even though he couldn't see their faces now, he could not banish the sight of their lifeless eyes from when they were lying prone before the gates of hell.

"I'm gonna find whoever did this," he hissed to them. He picked up the autopsy reports from the last two vics, even though he had read them a thousand times. No signs of trauma, no toxins, no nothing to indicate sudden death. They weren't dehydrated or starved and they hadn't died from exposure. Only the cuts on their hands tied them together.

Now Garth looked at the Winchesters' reports. Sam and Dean both had cuts as well. Sam's had scabbed, and Dean's was sutured, indicating the wounds were acquired before death. But then he read something else. The brothers had matching tattoos: a star wreathed in sun waves. And both of them had been mutilated with a single brand.

Garth grabbed the sheet covering Dean and pulled it down to his chest. Sure enough, the tattoo charm that protected him from unwilling possession had been countered with a burn as thick and long as a finger, running diagonally across it. When he checked Sam, he found his the same.

Garth dropped the clipboards noisily on the table, baring his teeth. Possession. Blood. Stopped hearts and ruined charms. What did it all mean?

He would hit the books. He would drag the facts out kicking and screaming by morning if he had to chug five espressos an hour to do so. But just as Garth stepped around Dean's gurney, he spotted scarlet against the blanched sheet.

"Huh?" Lifting up the material, Garth pulled out Dean's wrist, which had several fresh cuts, including two open gashes. Blood had burst out but they weren't bleeding – how could they, when there was nothing to push the blood – and Garth was absolutely certain those wounds hadn't been there when he came in.

"Excuse me."

Garth spun around, unable to hide the guilt that flashed across his face. The medical examiner, an ancient woman with dark eyes, who looked like she could have retired twice, had appeared out of nowhere. "Exactly what do you think you are doing?"

"I...I'm on the case. I was just looking the vics over. Um..." Garth turned and grabbed Dean's stiff arm, raising it up to show her the new wounds. "This wasn't on the report."

She frowned and came closer. Garth was able to read Dr A. Corrigan on her name tag. She took a closer look at Dean's hand.

"They appear to have occurred postmortem. No excessive bleeding, no clotting, no signs of healing."

"What do you think could have caused this?" asked Garth. "The coroners were very careful bringing him in."

The examiner shrugged. "I don't know. Look at these. They weren't from grazing the ground. It was like he punched a window or mirror, and had glass embedded in his hand."

"Which I'm pretty damn sure he hasn't done. Being dead and all."

She and Garth shared a look.

"I'm going to look them over again. Just in case I've... _missed_ something else," she said, and Garth nodded in agreement.

"I have some research to do. Call me if you find anything."

Ω

"So you time travelled and opened the door a hundred and fifty years ago?"

"Um, no, not exactly. It was really just a dimension within this one that _looked_ like it was from the past," said Sam hesitantly. "I think."

Dean frowned at the now open door, which, according to Sam, led to the kids' bedroom.

"This...this isn't our normal gig."

Sam scoffed. "You're just figuring that out now?"

"Dude, I've never heard any of this happening to anyone! Ever! And we've encountered two monsters we've never seen before. What the hell?!"

"Hey, just calm down. We've made it this far. We can finish it."

Damn Sam and his soothing tone. Dean took a few deep breaths, locking away his confusion and fear while coaxing determination out of the shadows. It didn't need much prompting.

"Better," said Sam at his brother's expression. "Let's go."

The hunters entered the room cautiously but without pause. Several sets of windows against one wall cast in ample grey light, the infernal fog beyond as opaque as ever. Dean set the lantern down on the floor, as it was not needed, before stepping in further.

"So what are we looking for now?"

Sam shrugged, eyes drawn to his candelabra, their fickle guide. It was sitting on a dresser between two of the tiny beds, about halfway down the long, narrow room.

As Dean began investigating the beds one by one, Sam moved to the closet at the far end, frowning. When he had opened it in the alternate dimension, hunting the dark smoke that had killed the maid, he had torn everything out of there, casting it on the floor. Here, now, the same clothes and shoe boxes were in the same places he'd left them. But he was sure he'd left the closet door open. Now it was closed.

"Weird."

"Say something?" called Dean.

"Nothing." As he turned to survey the room, hands on his waist, he chewed his lip in thought. He barely got thinking when he saw the bedroom door start to close on its own.

"Hey!"

Dean spun around and made a dash for it, but before he could reach it, it clicked shut. He tried the knob, then bashed at the door.

"Locked!"

"Dude, hold it." Sam squinted from across the room, then moved closer. Words had been scratched into the solid wood.

 _Go to sleep._

"You've got to be joking."

"What?" Dean stepped back, and scoffed. "Sleep? Here?"

"If we want to continue, yeah, I guess."

The elder hunter growled and kicked the door. "I'm tired of this."

"Then have a nap."

He glowered at Sam, who smirked.

"Alright, smartass, where should we sleep?"

Not all of the beds still had sheets, pillows or even mattresses, but two had all three, and they were the ones on either side of the dresser bearing the candelabra. Sam nodded to them and joined his brother there, where they studied the beds.

"Kinda...small." Sam figured he could fit everything but his legs from mid-thigh down. And it would be little easier for Dean.

"Hey, I've seen you curl up in your sleep a few times," said Dean, smirking. "You're like a little hamster."

It was Sam's turn to glower. "Bite me." He sat on the bed closer to the closet. Dust whorled up around him, and he breathed slowly until it rested. At least the frame didn't break under his weight.

Dean meanwhile gave his bed a few kicks. "I'm not gonna sleep on this if there's rats." But nothing came scurrying out, so he, too, sat before lying down. He kept his knees bent so he wouldn't have to hang his legs over the wrought iron footboard. "Comfy."

Sam lied diagonally across the mattress, feet on the floor. It was anything _but_ comfy, but he'd slept in the Impala on more than one occasion. He could take an hour or two on a teeny bed.

"Sleep tight," said Dean.

Sam folded the flaccid pillow and set it under his head before nestling down. "Sweet dreams."


	10. Paralysis

**9:01**

* * *

~10~ Paralysis

Dean wasn't tired. Not even weary. Accompanied by a throbbing hand and a lumpy, too-small mattress, he knew he wasn't going to sleep anytime soon. But he would try, because he had to.

In the next bed Sam's breathing was slow and even. Not slow enough to indicate slumber, so Dean knew his brother was having equal difficulty. He refrained from speaking, despite all the questions that prodded his tongue. Was he hungry? Thirsty? Dean wasn't. He hadn't needed to pee for a long time either. That was usually taken care of before a hunt (for obvious reasons), but they had been in this old manor for hours. Perhaps there had been too many distractions.

It seemed like forever before Sam's breathing slowed. Dean looked over at him, studying his profile. The worry lines had melted from his face, and his eyes were not roaming around under their lids. Sam must have found some peace, hidden even from the dream realm.

Dean released a breath and stared at the ceiling. He imagined himself on a soft, fluffy cloud, counted backwards by threes from three hundred, and used the breathing techniques he'd learned from watching Dr Oz. But it wasn't until he stopped trying anything that there was, at last, a change.

It wasn't a change he expected. He had blinked, only to open his eyes to darkness. Strange. The windows had let in the unchanging light all day. Had night fallen at last?

Dean tried to lift his head to look. His heart jolted when he realized he couldn't. He felt no restraints, and yet he could not bend an arm, shift a leg, or even open his mouth.

Sleep paralysis. He'd experienced it more than once in the past, with particularly disturbing or stressful cases. So he knew it would release him within seconds and he would return to oblivion.

But he didn't. And as time drew on, his fear could be felt, as well as heard, like his fingers were in his ears.

 _Sam! Hey, a little help!_ He could not utter the words. His eyes ignored his commands.

It wasn't so dark anymore. His dilated pupils began to make out the ceiling rafters...

Rafters? There hadn't been rafters before.

His heart continued to pound, now sounding like it was coming from an outside source. Once more he tried to move, or even grunt. But it was like he was seeing from the eyes of somebody else, and had no control.

Then, shadow returned. The rafters dimmed, and with it, the sound of his heart. And the dark silence was worse.

 _Sam...! Sammy... S-s-s-sam... Sssss..._

A foreboding lump formed in his gut. That wasn't from his thoughts. Something was hissing nearby.

 _Ssssss..._

Scales rustled over the sheets. He felt a tiny tongue flicker at his ear. He told his body to leap up and away but it would not listen. The hairs behind his ear tickled him as something brushed by. And then the snake slid up over his throat, slow, cold and coarse, before finding its way into his shirt through the collar.

Helpless. He could do nothing as it slithered down his sternum, tongue flickering out, before settling around his naval. Dean's breathing quickened. Shudders rippled down his back.

Of all the things that scared him, snakes were not at the top of the list. But he was far from comfortable about having one roam freely over his body.

The snake's cold nose poked into his belly button, as though it had thought it a hole to disappear into. Realizing its mistake, the serpent continued to explore, following muscle lines until it found Dean's pant-line.

 _God, no_...

Somehow it found its way past his belt, into his jeans.

 _That's not a rat! Get away from there._

Fortunately the snake bypassed the tender bits, but it did take its time at the sensitive ones. Its sandpaper belly encroached on the erogenous skin of his inner thigh, and he expected, at any moment, that it would sink in needle teeth...

But it did not. It nosed its way under his knee, which tickled madly, before coiling around his lower leg a few times and squeezing. It remained there for so long Dean thought it intended to stay until...until, what? He woke up? Or starved to death?

Finally, it released his leg and slipped back the way it had come, into his shirt. There it paused, seeming to enjoy the warmth. But its time was up, and it found its way back to his collar. Fresh goosebumps riled his flesh as it passed over his throat again, tongue flicking under his jaw. It paused and hissed, as though contemplating on giving him a little love bite. Dean breathed sharply through his nose, praying it would simply move on...

Only when its tail followed its long body off of his, and its hissing faded to silence, did Dean feel a shred of relief.

But it was short-lived. A dim light returned, green and sourceless. His view: suspended ceiling tiles, cracked and chipped, discoloured by water stains.

He knew he was still asleep. He had to be. This was a modern ceiling design. There was even a fire sprinkler up there. It all had to be in his head. But that did not reassure him.

When the light began to fade again, Dean felt a new stirring of fear.

 _Sam, wake up. Wake up so you can wake me up._

Once more in darkness, he waited for another serpent to come by and invade his personal space. His own breathing was deafening. And then, whispers.

He couldn't quite make them out. They sounded like they were in the next room over, the volume suggesting they didn't care who could hear. But the poor articulation prevented anyone from listening.

Then a door slammed. Dean would have flinched had he control of his own body. Another door slammed shut, while a third creaked open. Giggles. Mischievous and mad. Further away, shrieking laughter, but he doubted anything was actually funny.

 _What in hell is this?_

The whispers became louder, but no easier to understand. Footsteps padded past him, somewhere near his head. His hunter senses burned, urging him to look. But he couldn't.

Someone was crying now. A woman. Long, hard sobs, some mumbled words. She wailed a few times before another door slammed, cutting off the sounds.

The footsteps returned, walking to his left this time. They paused, then hurried away.

The incessant giggling was starting to get on his nerves. Dean wanted to tell them to shut up and shove off, to let him have a little peace. As if sensing his annoyance, the shrieking laughter started up again, until somebody shushed them.

The shushing continued until all sounds were silenced. For one foolish moment Dean thought it was over. But the conspiring whispers soon swelled up again. The footsteps came back, circling. He could hear someone breathing, messy and wet, like they had a cold. They paused near his head, but he could not see them. He could, however, sense them leaning over him, sniffing him.

 _What the_ hell _is going on? Get me out of here!_

They slurped in his ear. He wanted to cringe away.

 _Bang bang bang!_

His creeper scurried off like a rat.

 _Bang bang bang!_

Someone was bashing on the walls. Others were running up and down a corridor. Dean wanted nothing more than to cover his ears and curl up in a ball. The laughter, shrieks, giggling and whispers undulated in volume, gradually growing louder.

 _Go away, go away, GO AWAY!_

There was one last, blood-curling scream, and then silence.

The calm and the quiet drew on for so long, he thought he'd gone deaf. But then his breathing kicked back into gear, and his head suddenly felt clearer.

 _Come on, Dean. Figure it out. How do I break out of this?_

Literally breaking out wasn't an option. He still couldn't lift so much as a finger. If this was a trap, he was doomed. But if it was a riddle, all he needed to do was solve it.

Why the snake and why the crazy house? He wasn't fond of serpents and he'd had two bad run-ins with psychiatric wards, but those were far from the worst fears or experiences in his life. Perhaps they were meant to symbolize something else. Snakes were generally seen as the spawn of evil, a creature of Lucifer, and Dean had had more than his fair share of meetings with him. As for the mentally disturbed, maybe it was perspective. Does a madman know he's mad?

The more he tried to pick it apart, the sooner he came to realize he was overthinking it. Then, as he disregarded his flimsy ideas, round three began.

He saw no light this time, no change in the ceiling. Darkness remained as a slow, low pitched sound came from directly overhead. It was steady, each sound lasting just under two seconds.

 _Thhhrum... Thhhrum..._

As it grew slowly, slowly louder, he decided that it must be something swinging back and forth, and coming closer with every swing. But what? And why?

Suddenly, in sync with the swings, a deep red glow lit something lean over him. The light faded, then welled up again a few seconds later. At its brightest Dean tried to figure out what it was he was looking at. By his peripherals, he guessed its pivot point was directly over his torso, and it swung lengthwise over his body from his head to his toes and back again. Its end, which entered his line of vision every few seconds, was as lean as the shaft it was attached to.

His guts churned as he realized it was a pendulum. Its weight was a large, crescent blade. And with every pass, it lowered, coming closer and closer to slicing open his chest.

For the first time since entering the manor, his mouth was dry. He struggled motionlessly harder than ever. He wanted to suck in his gut every time the blade passed over it. He wanted to scream.

Any second now, any second, he was going to feel a fiery pain slice up his sternum. It would lengthen and intensify, the skin parting to reveal raw muscle, then bone, but he would not die. The incision would spread to his stomach and catch his chin. Then the blade would slice his rib cage open and expose his heart and lungs and he would bleed. There would be blood everywhere, so much blood and sweat and pain and he would wish for it all to be over just be over and done done DONE—!


	11. Play

**9:03**

* * *

~11~ Play

Sam sat up with a groan, rubbing his face, fingers ruffling his bangs. It was hopeless. He was never going to fall asleep in this creepy bedroom.

"Dean?" He swung his legs out of bed but did not stand. "You awake?"

He stared at the other bed. Where his brother should have been was a bare mattress.

The initial jolt of alarm faded. Dean must have been having problems too and had gotten up...without Sam noticing. Yeah.

"Dean?"

He stood and looked around. Everything seemed normal. Except that he was looking from a lower point of view.

"What the...?" He glanced down at himself. The floor was much closer than it should be. He was in a black Led Zeppelin sweatshirt, baggy jeans with holes in the knees, and too big, hand-me-down high tops he remembered were once his brother's.

"Crap."

He must be nine or ten years old. So he _was_ asleep. He checked his sweatshirt pockets and was relieved to find his flashlight and knife, but Dean's lantern was nowhere to be found and his own candelabra had extinguished. Sam scanned the room for anything else different.

The more he looked, the stranger the room appeared. Almost stretched, and blurry unless he looked at something full on. Colours bled into one another, and the whole room had taken a bluish hue.

Sam blinked and rubbed his eyes. He didn't feel asleep.

"Dean? Where are you, man?"

He went to the door, only to pause. Chains were strung across the door, pegs as fat as his thumb driven through the links into the wooden frame. The words _Go to sleep_ had been clawed out, violently, and underneath someone had scratched, _Time to play_.

Sam's throat tightened. Had he been thrown into another dimension again?

" _Ring-a-round the_ _rosie,  
_ _A pocket full of posies..._ "

He turned at the sound of little girls' singing, expecting ghosts. He saw no one. The poem made way for giggles. There were at least three of the invisible spectres, and they sounded happy.

"Hello?" Sam stepped further into the room. The giggling stopped, almost guiltily, as if the girls had already been told to go to bed. Then he felt a cold hand grab his.

"Wanna play? Come play with us!"

"Um..." Sam felt himself following nothing, led by an unseen hand, towards the middle of the room. Just before the hand stopped tugging he stepped on something odd-shaped. When he lifted his foot, he saw a bone jack. Several more were scattered about on the floor.

"Play with us!" A small ball flew into the air on its own, and a few jacks disappeared. It flew up again and more jacks vanished.

" _Ring-a-round the rosie,  
_ _A pocket full of posies,  
_ _Ashes, ashes,  
_ _We all fall down!_ "

Suddenly Sam had no strength in his legs. He collapsed, landing on his backside. His arms caught him before he hit his head.

"Your turn!" a girl called. All the jacks had reappeared. The ball rolled towards him, and an air of expectation was smothering. He peered around, trying to see the children. But he looked like he was all alone, lying on a dusty floor with a wood ball and some pieces of bone.

Shrugging, Sam tossed the ball in the air and picked up a jack. Catching the ball, he threw it again and snatched up two more jacks. The problem was, he didn't know if he had to win or lose the game.

"I did it in _four_ throws," one of the girls crowed. She sounded like the oldest. "Beat that!"

That was answer enough for Sam. Concentrating (and feeling silly doing so) he tossed the ball up for a third time and scooped up the last of the jacks. He nearly dropped one as he caught the ball, but his pinkie curled around it just in time.

There was a huff from the oldest girl and gleeful clapping from the other two. "Again, again! Let's play again!"

Sam scattered the jacks and tipped the ball out of his hand, letting it roll to nothing in particular. How long was he going to have to do this?

Two of the ghost girls had played their turn when they all gasped a single breath.

"It's Mrs Kenningsworth! Hide!"

Sam blinked, then shivered as one of the children ran through him. He heard a thud behind him and twisted around to see a footlocker. She had hidden herself inside.

"Come on!" An invisible hand grabbed his again, tugging on it. "If she finds you, she'll drop you in the well! Or make you eat raw fish brains!"

Sam had no choice but to stand. He could hear footsteps now, sharp and precise, coming down the hall.

He tried to make his way over to another footlocker.

"No, I'm hiding there!"

"Then where am I supposed to hide?" asked Sam.

"Get in the closet! Quick!" The hand vanished, and he heard a thud from the chest.

As with the game of knucklebones, Sam thought it best he go along with things. He rushed to the end of the room and into the closet, pulling the door closed behind him.

He was panting. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, the girls' fear contagious.

The door was planked, not solid like the others of the manor. He peered out through a gap, listening to the footsteps growing steadily louder. Almost too loud, like they were overhead, not out in the hallway. Then they stopped. The door knob rattled but did not open.

Young Sam flinched as the door jerked as though struck by a battering ram. The chains rattled. Three more loud bangs filled the room, and then silence. Mrs Kenningsworth, whoever she was, seemed to have given up.

Sam released a breath, leaning back to sag against the rear wall. But he kept going, and had to take a few hasty steps back to regain his balance. Odd. The closet hadn't been this deep before. He wanted to reach out and feel for the walls, but something was telling him to keep all his digits to himself.

He turned around. The darkness was absolute. He reached into his pocket, fingering the flashlight. There was the oddest sensation of _nothing_ in front of him.

 _Light. Just turn on a light, you pansy._

He pulled out the flashlight and clicked in on. And he was glad he hadn't taken another step.

Spread out before him was a massive hole. And not like a warm, cozy, hobbit hole. It was dark, dirty and dank, bottomless, and seemed to be sucking in air. The faint clunking sound of old machinery echoed from the abyss. And Sam's oversized hand-me-down high-tops were inches from the edge. Swallowing, he took a step back.

Was that his breathing? It almost sounded like it had an echo. He stilled his chest, then inhaled slowly, softly. He tensed as he heard someone else's breathing pattern follow suit a moment after.

 _He_ was standing right behind him. Sam felt his breath on his neck. And then Lucifer whispered in his ear.

"Sam."

Clawed hands shoved him in the back. The hunter plunged into the hole, unable to scream, losing the flashlight in his efforts to grab something, anything, to break his fall.

When he hit the ground, pins and needles shot out through his whole body. He should have died. Or woken up. He knew this was still a dream. Just a dream. All he had to do was wake up. _Wake up!_

The sounds of gnashing, clanking machinery was louder now. Gears grinding. Pistons hissing. Fans shrieking as they turned round and round. Sam opened his eyes. Rivets. Rusty plate. A grate above branded lines of dirty light on the floor and across his body, filling the room with a red-brown hue. A fan blade slowly cut across the light every few seconds.

Sam sat up and looked around. A square room, made of those rusty plates and rivets. Small, only five paces from wall to wall. And he wasn't alone.

Someone was bundled up into the corner, collar of their dark jacket pulled over their face. But Sam could recognize his brother anywhere.

"Dean?" He crawled closer. Funny, how he was a boy and yet his brother was grown up. But for whatever reason, it made sense. He was dreaming, after all.

"Dean." Sam reached out to him. "Are you hurt?"

Dean jerked the collar away from his face, and Sam recoiled. His brother was pale, open cuts drawn down his cheeks from his eyes. His throat had been cut and crudely sewn shut. He opened his mouth to speak, but it didn't look right. Like someone was using his body as a ventriloquist dummy.

"Your fault."

"What? No, Dean—"

"You did this to me." Red tears dribbled down his face. Sam forced back tears of his own.

"No. No, I didn't. It wasn't me!"

"You killed me. All I've done, all I've ever done, was protect you. I went to _hell_ for you. _You killed me!_ " Dean lurched up, ribbons of blood flying from his fingers. His head lolled, neck broken, but his hands found his little brother's face. Sam fell on his back, struggling, as Dean's nails dug in, harder and harder, tearing the skin of his cheeks and jaw...

They faltered, then fell away. Dean looked down, grasping at the knife in his dead heart.

Choking back a sob, Sam scrambled out of reach, backing away until he hit a wall. He trembled, watching his brother die.

No. This thing was _not_ his brother. Dean was alive, out there somewhere, in the real world.

Collapsing on his side, Dean coughed. Black bile spewed from between his lips. It spattered like tar all over the floor. Sam tucked his feet in closer, pressing his back into the wall, shaking. Then he noticed the walls. Between the plates, around the rivets, something was oozing, sliding down the walls and pooling on the floor. It was red and warm and sticky. And it came faster with every beat of his heart.

He turned his eyes back to the creature that looked like his brother, and stared, horrified, as it began to wither. From out of its wounds wriggled countless little _things_ that squirmed over to the pooling blood, rolling and gorging themselves in it. Leeches. Hundreds and hundreds of leeches.

Sam stared, then locked eyes with Dean again. He was grinning.

"Jesus _weeps_."

He dissolved completely, body deflating like an empty sack. Thousands of roiling leeches spilled over the floor, which was now fully submerged. Sam scrambled to his feet, splashing blood everywhere. It saturated his shoes, soaked his pants. It was gushing out of the walls now, and soon it rose above his knees, then his waist. He scratched the walls, seeking purchase.

"Help!" he cried. "Help me!"

" _Help me, help me_ ," a voice mocked. "You never helped _them_ , Sammy."

He turned, recognizing that voice as quickly and surely as he would his brother's. But he couldn't see Lucifer.

"All this blood. All spilled because you were too weak. Too slow. Because you failed."

"You're gone!" Sam yelled. "I beat you!"

He could sense the devil's smile. "Am I? Did you? Then why do you think of me still? Don't you ever wonder why it's _so_ difficult to repress memories these days?" The voice moved behind him, and he resisted the urge to turn. "You let me in, boy-o. I'm here to stay."

Sam spun around, fist swinging. But there was nothing to hit. Lucifer chuckled, a chilling sound that sent tingles like spiders up his spine.

"You're broken."

The laughter grew louder and more maniacal with the rising pool of blood roiling with leeches. Sam's pleas for help went unheard, and soon the blood rose over his head, filling his mouth, blinding him.

"Broken!"

Sam was screaming when he bolted upright in bed, still young and shrimpy, but not drowning in innocent blood. Not dying.

He scrambled off the bed, whirling around, scanning the room.

"Dean!"

 _Bang!_

The closet door bucked in its frame, splintering at the hinges. Sam jumped and backed away, into towers of toy blocks. He fell, catching himself with his hands.

 _Bang! Bang!_ The door looked ready to explode. Something stopped bashing at it and began to claw. The sounds of sniffing came through, like a massive dog had pressed its nose to the jam.

A hellhound. Here to drag him back to hell.

"No. No, please."

It growled, then snarled, tearing at the wood.

"Leave me alone!" He seized a toy block and hurtled it across the room. It bounced off the closet door uselessly. He gripped his hair, knees drawn up, despair building up inside him like magma in a mountain. He was a child again, in mind as well as body, just learning that the things Daddy said weren't real _were_ real, and could hurt him, kill him and his family. He had given a silver knife, not a teddy bear, to keep him safe in the night. He had practised marksmanship after school, not soccer or basketball. He might be a man now, a man who had seen a level of hell no demon ever has, who had fought creatures older than the human race, who had danced with death so many times it had lost all meaning to him. But little Sam was still in there, the part of him that feared the dark and all that lurked within.

Here, now, Sam was afraid of the dark. Because it was clawing the closet door in half, eager to be free, eager to eat him alive. Sam crawled under the bed and covered his eyes.

"Sam."

He froze.

"Sammy."

"Mom?" He uncovered his eyes, to see the shadow of the bed sharp on the floor. A light had been lit.

He pushed himself out from under the bed and turned. It was the candelabra, the one that had guided him and Dean to the bedroom in the first place. It had lit itself, the candles casting a warm bubble that chased away the darkness.

Chased away the darkness.

Sam leaped to his feet and seized the silver body of the candelabra. Abandoning all fear he charged at the closet and yanked the door open, only to throw the candles inside.

Then it was gone. The nightmare, the blood, the youth. All gone. At the same moment, the real Dean sat up in bed, screaming and clawing at his chest.

Sam whirled around, eyes wide. "Dean!" He shook away sudden vertigo wrought by his change of heights and rushed over, grabbing his shoulder and shaking him vigorously. "Dean, wake up!"

His brother's eyes cleared, and he stopped screaming. He looked down at himself, still holding fistfuls of his shirt. "What the hell?"

"Nightmares. They were just nightmares." Sam looked around. The chains were gone from the door, and the message had been scratched out like before. But the second message had not been added.

Dean rubbed his eyes before blinking owlishly, scanning the room. "What the hell?" he repeated.

"I know. What did you see?"

Dean cringed at the sudden memory of having a pendulum swing close enough to slice open his sternum. But he played it cool. "Oh, the usual. What about you? Sleepwalking?"

"I...I guess." Sam glanced around at the mess he had made. The scattered bone jacks and toy blocks.

Dean groaned and stood, stretching his back before shaking out his arms. "Man, it feels good to move... Dude, what's wrong with your face?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Don't worry, I was born with it."

"No, seriously. Did something scratch you?"

He reached up, and his cheeks stung. "Must have done that to myself." No point in telling him that it was Dean's evil doppelganger that had done the cat clawing. Because that had been in a nightmare.

"Hmph." As Dean stretched, Sam went to the closet. His throat was like sandpaper. Muscles jumping in his jaw, he suddenly seized the knob and yanked the door open.

It was just a closet. The candles, now extinguished, lay scattered on the floor. Sam quietly picked them up and replaced them in the candelabra, which he lit before making for the bedroom exit. He was relieved to find it unlocked.

"Dude, wait. Listen."

Sam reluctantly turned, candle flames swaying with the movement. He held his breath, disregarding the constant moans of the house. And he heard a soft scratching sound.

"Mice," he said simply.

"Shh!" Dean cocked his head this way and that, and began to zero in on the two beds. He knelt, peering underneath the one he had used. Then he jumped as the bed started to move, but it was only Sam, dragging it away and exposing another message, this time scratched into the floor.

 _Feel as we feel, see as we see. Poisoned children, we three._

"...The hell does that mean?"

Dean scratched his head. "You mentioned three sick children when you went through the mirror."

"Yeah, but... You don't think they were poisoned?"

He shrugged. "Wouldn't have thought anyone would murder a pastor either."

Sam frowned, rubbing his jaw as he stared down at the message. "What did you see in your nightmares, Dean?"

"Like I told you. The usual."

Sam gave him a flat look. Dean huffed.

"I was paralyzed. I was molested by a snake, thrust in a mad house, and then sliced in half by a pendulum. Happy?"

"...What?"

With an irritated sigh, Dean gave him more details, withholding anything he knew wouldn't help them figure out the point of the message.

Sam had his thinking face on. Dean meanwhile began digging graves for these new memories. He would bury them and never exhume them. Ever.

"' _Feel as we feel, see as we see_...' You experienced three things that causes nightmares in children. Or anyone, for that matter," said Sam at last. "Helplessness. Confusion. Anticipation. Leads to fear."

Dean frowned. "Okay. So what?"

Scratching the back of his neck, Sam shrugged. "Maybe that's what the kids felt when they were s— poisoned."

"Sounds like a bit of a stretch to me."

"If you've got anything better, spill it."

"Well what did _you_ see? Why were you throwing candles and toy blocks around?"

Sam pursed his lips, but as Dean had shared, it was only fair he did too. He recounted the three girls playing jacks, the approach of a Mrs Kenningsworth, hiding in a closet and falling into a pit. Then, with more reluctance, Sam told him how he had watched him die, wielding the murder weapon, only to appear back in the room, something trying to claw its way through the closet door.

"I threw the candles in there. Then, we both woke up," he finished, shrugging again.

It was Dean's turn to look thoughtful. "You said something came out of the closet and killed a maid, in that other dimension. Figure it was the same thing?"

"It's possible, I guess. If it could grow and become corporeal."

"Hm...What's under your bed?"

Sam moved over and push it away, exposing a second less-dusty rectangle on the floor. Instead of words, there was a small black chess piece. A knight. He knelt and picked it up, frowning.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Beats me." Dean stood and dusted off his knees. As he straightened, he heard the distant Westminster chimes. Quarter after nine. Strange. They had only slept a few minutes.

"...Hey, man, I don't feel so good."

Dean tensed as Sam suddenly keeled over, barely catching himself with one arm.

"Whoa. What's wrong?"

"Dunno." Sam blinked hard a few times, mouth moving like he was ready to throw up. He put a hand to his gut. "Just...weak all of a sudden."

Dean knelt and put the back of his hand to Sam's forehead. "You're burning up. Want me to get you some water?"

"Where the hell are you gonna find drinkable water around here, Dean?" He took several deep breaths, and Dean could see minute shifts of Sam's face. "I think I'm good. Yeah. Yeah, I'm good." He stood like nothing had been wrong. Dean stared up at him, eyebrow cocked.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm... I don't know, that was weird."

Dean got to his feet again, watching his brother carefully. "Maybe you're hungry."

Sam made a face, pocketing the chess piece. "Don't feel hungry."

"Nah, me neither." He watched him rub his gut again, then decided it best they got moving. Distraction was the best cure for a hunter.

It was with great relief when they stepped from the children's bedroom and closed the door. Not that the corridor beyond was any friendlier.

"Where to now?" asked Sam softly. The candelabra didn't seem like it was about to guide them to the next room as it did before, and the only clue they got was the knight chess piece. They also had the key from the library, but that hadn't worked on any door so far.

Dean shrugged and fiddled with the dial of his lantern, trying to make it brighter. "Didn't think this would get easier as we went. But let's get out of this hallway. It's kind of spooky."

The hunters returned to the balcony overlooking the foyer, where there was a little more light.

"Okay. Let's pull it all together." Sam leaned against the railing. "Judge Thomas had an affair. His wife caught him or else somebody told her, that somebody likely being Pastor Gregory. Someone killed Gregory in the parlour."

"Three kids were poisoned and a forth drowned. Something spooked the staff."

Sam nodded, recalling the vision of the past, with the gossiping maids. "Something in the woods. They mentioned that as though they knew something was out there."

"But what? The Beast?"

"Beast?"

Dean pulled out the sheet of parchment they'd gotten from the bible in the library. "The last line. 'Beware the Beast.'"

"Right. Any ideas?"

Dean shrugged one shoulder. "Loads. But we've got nothing to narrow it down with."

Sam released a breath, unconsciously rubbing his middle. "We need to find out more about the family. They must have archives somewhere. Not in the library of course. We combed that."

"How many lived here, did you say?"

Sam closed his eyes, summoning a mental picture of the Corvus family tree. "Thomas and his wife, Ariel. Their four kids, one of whom died in a horseback accident in 1844, and their spouses. Then seven grandkids. Four of them died that same year, by the sounds of it."

"Hmph. I wonder if they were siblings. Losing all your rugrats at once would drive any parent crazy."

"Crazy enough to turn on your own family?"

Dean shrugged. "Some people just can't handle the grief. No parents should have to bury their kids."

Silence fell between the two brothers for several seconds. Sam strummed his fingers on the railing, then cleared his throat.

"Alright. So from what I can remember, the rest of the family killed each other within two years. Only Agnes, the youngest, escaped. Lilly Andersen said the staff wasn't spared either, although that's just the local legend."

Dean's face skewed. "I don't know, man, I don't think grief is quite that strong. Something supernatural definitely pushed these people to the brink."

"I'm not disagreeing. But finding who pushed the first domino is probably our ticket out of here. Remember the clock riddle?"

"'You'll find me if you play my game,'" recited Dean, the words of Sam's brief possession branded on his brain. "The last line still bothers me, too. 'In history lost, salvation you'll find.'"

"That's why I think we need to find the archives. The ghosts have been giving us hints but it's just too slow."

"'Hunt them down and tarry not, or lost you'll be and soon forgot _._ '" Dean nodded. "Goodie."

Sudden nausea spawned in Sam's gut. He chewed his lip to hide his sickened expression. "Maybe if we go to the third floor, we'll find something."

Dean shook his head. "I tried going upstairs. Wouldn't let me."

"Wouldn't _let_ you?" The nausea passed, and he was able to relax.

"Yeah...Never mind. Let's just have another look on this floor. There's gotta be something in one of these rooms."

"There's a study. We can start there."

"Right. Why don't you go there and I'll take another round through the west wing."

"Fine. Take this." Sam passed him the key from the library. "I didn't see any locks in the study before. You might have better luck."

Dean took it with a curt nod, then the brothers parted without another word.


	12. White

**That awkward moment when you realize you've written most of the story spelling door knob wrong. *pushes face through the dirt***

* * *

 **9:18**

* * *

~12~ White

Although his senses shifted into overdrive, Sam was grateful for the solitude. What was definitely not hunger crept up on him again as he entered the study, twice as bad as it had been. He closed the door and leaned against it, sliding down onto his rear and remaining in a ball until the feeling passed.

 _It's nothing. Nothing to concern Dean with. Suck it up, Winchester._

He finally uncurled himself, swallowing the extra spit that had pooled in his mouth. As he stood, he scanned the study for anything of interest.

There were two windows in the back wall, a small table between them with a pot that would have once held a plant. On either side wall there were bookshelves, some with tomes, others with stacks of paper or scrolls. Marble bookends in the shapes of lion heads glared at him with pale eyes. A single desk dominated the room, upon which there were more sheets of paper, a bottle and two wine glasses filmed with dust. In the corner of the study was a large globe. Even from the door, Sam could see its inaccuracies.

He heaved a breath. Then he chose one side of the room and began his search.

* * *

Dean hummed 'Highway to Hell' as he scouted the west wing for the third time that night. The doors that had been locked before were the same doors that were locked now; none of them had opened themselves since the brothers defeated the nightmares (or at least Sam did. Dean would never let it down how useless he himself had been), and none of them made way for either of his keys. But Dean was patient, going through every room he could with a different eye. This time, he wasn't looking for Sam. He was looking for anything that might yield to the keys.

Halfway down the hall, he paused to draw his revolver at the sound of footsteps overhead. They were slow and heavy, and it sounded like something was being dragged behind them.

The hall of the next floor must be right above Dean's, for he was able to follow the low thuds almost to the end before the footsteps paused, replaced by the sound of a creaky door opening. The ghost entered a room, dragging its burden with it, and with a final _slam_ , silence fell once more.

Dean listened for more fruitlessly, then realized he was standing before a pair of double doors, which he knew led to the master bedroom. He pushed them open with the tip of his gun, taking a quick pan before stepping over the threshold.

It was a large space, over twice the size of the other bedrooms. A pair of fourposter beds took the corners on the left. To the right were two more doorways, a quick glance revealing them to be a dressing room and some kind of nursery. Between the doors was a stand with a washbasin, an ewer balanced on the edge. An oval table took the middle of the floor, scattered with sheets of paper, an inkwell and quills. The carpet had nearly rotted away to nothing, exposing dark wood beneath. In the far wall was set a fireplace, and beside it was all glass, French doors leading out onto a balcony.

The fog, Dean noticed, had still not lifted. And it should be nighttime by now. But for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to care.

His eyes fell on a mahogany writing desk opposite the fireplace. Under the lid he could see a gleam of gold, but dared not feel hope until he approached and tested the key from the library in the keyhole. It fit perfectly.

"Bingo." Turning it, he felt the little tumblers shift aside, heard a soft click. He lifted the table top, exposing the storage space below.

Not knowing what to expect, he was still surprised – and more than a little disappointed – to find only a small tinderbox, dented and corroded. How was this supposed to help him solve the Corvus mystery?

Dean picked it up, set the table top back down before resting the box and the lantern on it. With the extra light, he was able to make out the strange symbols scratched into the top and sides. He didn't recognize them, although they had similarities to the Latin alphabet.

"Let's take a looky-loo." He tugged on the edge of the lid, expecting it to pop right off. It didn't. Frowning, he tried from the other end, then squinted around the lip, looking for a seal.

Behind him, a figure coalesced near the washbasin. She watched him with doleful eyes but dark intent. She took a step towards him, her white summer dress black with old blood, blood that had long since gushed from her wrists and the massive, open slash in her middle, just below her belly button. In her right hand was the straight razor she had chosen to use on herself after the attack. It had been her husband's.

She had tried to leave that day, many decades ago, but she wasn't allowed to. Something kept her there. Kept them all there. But there was a way out...

Dean was becoming so frustrated he began to contemplate shooting the tinderbox open. But he heaved a sigh, calming himself, and slipped it into an inside pocket of his jacket. Perhaps Sam will recognize the letters, and...

He stiffened at the unmistakable sound of a disturbed infant. It started as a low burble, then grew into coarse, hiccuping cries that quickly became a wail. Dean turned his head towards the nursery, and so his peripherals caught sight of the spirit trying to get the jump on him.

"Whoa!" Dean spun, reaching for his gun too late. He threw up an arm to deflect whatever she was attacking with, crying out as a clean line opened up along his forearm. He fell back against the writing desk, ducking beneath her next strike. She screamed at him, hair wild and matted, radiating craziness.

But then the gun was in his hand, and he got a shot in her. She flickered and vanished. Dean cursed. He only had so many bullets and they weren't as effective as rock salt. She would be back, and soon.

He became aware once more of the wailing babe. Keeping his gun out, he entered the nursery cautiously.

* * *

Sam perked at the sound of a gunshot.

"Dean...? Oh no." He dropped the book he'd been holding, turning on his heel. But he nearly lost his balance as he jerked to a stop, halted by the sight of a girl in a black dress, standing in front of the door. It was the same ghost who had told them to look in the grandfather clock for the first clue, then made an appearance in the music room. But...she looked older. By a few years at least.

"Hey—"

"You found it!" she exclaimed, staring at Sam's middle. He frowned.

"Found what?"

"Uncle Edward's knight. He stopped playing after he lost that knight."

Sam paused, then pulled the ebony chess piece from the kids' room out of his pocket. "You mean this?"

She beamed and nodded.

"Where...where did he usually play?"

"In the sun room, downstairs. He played alone, mostly. Then he died."

"Right, well, um, thanks."

She smiled again and turned, opening the door.

"Wait," said Sam. "What's your name?"

The ghost half turned back. "Agnes."

"Agnes? But—hey!" She had vanished.

Sam's confusion held him still for a few seconds. Firstly, how could Agnes, the sole survivor of the Corvus massacre, be here? As a child? And why didn't Sam feel at all cold in her presence?

Then he remembered what had startled him to begin with. Dean had fired his gun.

Sam rushed down the hall.

"Dean!"

* * *

The nursery was small, barely big enough for six people to stand in comfortably. If not for the many years of neglect it would have been a warm room. A happy room. A crib sat in the middle, on a dark purple rug. Dean stepped closer, peering down into the crib.

There was an immobile mass beneath a stark white blanket. It was definitely where the baby cries were coming from, but Dean was more than a little hesitant to move the blanket.

 _Don't be such a pansy_. Keeping a firm grip on the gun with his right hand, he slowly reached into the crib with his left. But before he could touch the blanket, red blossomed from the lump's middle. As the crying crescendoed, the stain spread, quickly turning white to scarlet.

The crib began to fill, a horrible pool of blood. Dean got the sense that something bad had happened in this room. Very bad. And he should not have come here.

He was about to turn when a cold hand splayed over the back of his head. Instantly his body seized, the cold so painful it felt like his skull would shatter. He couldn't scream, teeth gritting together and eyes screwed shut. He fell to his knees.

 _Let me in._

A woman's voice. Probably the same woman who had tried to give him an extra close shave a minute before. She filled his head and squashed his thoughts, and he couldn't move, couldn't fight back.

 _No! Think of something. Anything!_

He struggled to grasp onto a memory. His gun. His car. His brother.

 _Let me in. Let me in._

She was taking over. She was taking everything that was Dean, packaging it up and putting it in the closet. He forgot his gun. He couldn't remember the colour of his car. His brother's face became a blur that faded with the rest. Soon, he wouldn't even remember his own name.

 _Wait. What is my name?_

"DEAN!"

 _Oh yeah, that's it._

There was a ghastly shriek and then the cold spear in his skull retracted. Dean gasped and fell forward, catching himself before his face hit the floor. He felt a hand on his shoulder, gripping his jacket.

"Dean! Are you alright?"

"Sam?" His brother's voice was more than enough to bring everything flooding back. He rubbed his eyes and turned to look at him. He had a fire poker in his hand. Iron.

"Get up. We can't stay here."

Dean needed no further prompting. He scooped up his revolver, made sure the tinderbox was still in his jacket and then fled the nursery, Sam on his heels. He grabbed the lantern on his way out, and as they slammed the doors of the master bedroom shut, the wails of the infant were abruptly cut off.

"What happened?" Sam's eyes were wide, brightly reflecting the light from Dean's lantern. The poker from the fireplace was held with white-knuckle strength.

"I don't know." Dean rubbed the back of his head, where cold lingered. It was like he'd held an ice pack there. "Just got so cold, all of a sudden. I couldn't move. Then she started to speak..."

"What did she say? Was she trying to possess you?"

"Dunno. I thought ghosts just, you know, poof, take you over. This seemed to last forever." Dean felt his ears and under his eyes. No ectoplasm.

"She was touching the back of your head, and I could only see half of her. The rest was gone."

Dean shuffled. "You know, I...I felt this before?"

Sam blinked. "What? When?"

"In the parlour. That other ghost chick, the one that floated around bare footed, blurry face? Scared the crap out of you?"

Sam gave him a withering glare, but Dean's smirk was short and weak.

"When she touched me, I felt like...my own thoughts were being brushed aside. I couldn't move."

"That pretty much sums up possession, Dean."

"Yeah..." He didn't sound convinced, and Sam couldn't help but agree. This wasn't a normal haunting, and these weren't normal ghosts.

"Oh. I had a grave encounter as well." Sam told him of his talk with the little girl, who claimed to be Agnes.

"Agnes as in Lilly Andersen's great grandmother, Agnes?"

Sam nodded. "I mean, unless there were two kids named Agnes."

"That would be too weird."

"Weirder than her being here as a ghost child, when she would have had to survive and escape in order for Lilly to exist?" Sam pulled the black knight from his pocket. "She told me where this came from. Her uncle played chess in the sun room, downstairs."

"Alright. Let's see what else this charming house has to offer."

They had just reached the balcony overlooking the foyer when Sam realized he had left the candelabra in the study. He mumbled something to Dean about retrieving it, but as his brother started down the stairs, Sam froze at the sight of the dark hallway before him. He had his flashlight, yes, but everything, every nerve from head to toe, was telling him: _Do - not - go - there_.

As Dean vanished below, the darkness stretched towards Sam, and he began to hear something. It sounded like moth wings, thousands of them, all fluttering in sync. And claws, gently scrapping on the floor.

He couldn't even begin to place the sound. And he didn't want to. He hastened down the stairs after his brother, who, for reasons that were his own, said not a word on the matter.


	13. Aid

**9:32 PM**

* * *

~13~ Aid

Garth was kicked out of the library at nine thirty. Head hung low, feet dragging, it was almost as though the overloaded book bag was dragging him down. But it was not. It was the guilt. The burden of failure.

Nothing, absolutely nothing had been of any help in there. Possession was too broad a topic, and he found zilch on anything related to fresh wounds appearing on corpses. He'd called the hospital, but they said George Fernandez, the man Dean expelled the spirit from, had died soon after his "seizure." Garth couldn't ask a dead man any questions. Or he could, but he couldn't expect any answers.

Desperate for help, he'd called at least a dozen hunters, all of whom offered nothing.

" _Tennessee? Ooh, boy, I'm in Connecticut_..."

" _Sorry, man, can't help ya. Up to my eyeballs in vamps_..."

" _Winchesters? Dead? Better run, boy. Anything that can take out those two punks is way above your pay grade_..."

Garth had nearly thrown away his phone, all his phones, in an exceptionally rare fit of anger. But after a five minute session of _tai chi_ between the bookshelves, he'd regained his composure.

Now, however, he felt frustration bubbling up again.

He opened the door of his pickup and swung the book bag inside, onto the passenger seat. Clambering up behind the wheel, he'd just turned the ignition when he heard Van McCoy's _The Hustle_ tittering from one of his cell phones.

"Where is it...? Gaaah... Too many pockets... There." He found the right phone and hit the answer button. "Talk to me."

" _Um... Ranger Hank?"_

"Dr Corrigan, I presume."

" _Yes, you...presume correctly, um... I found something else. I... Can you get back here? Now? I'll unlock a back door_."

"On my way." Pulling on a seat belt (safety first), Garth hung up and threw the shift into drive, hitting the gas and pealing out of the parking lot.

He did not notice the ghost cruiser nose its way onto the road in silent pursuit.

* * *

"Look at this. Both of them."

Dr Corrigan led Garth to Dean first, exposing his right arm from beneath the shroud. Garth's eyebrows flew up his forehead.

"How did that get there?" A clean cut sliced open Dean's arm. Blood spattered the sheet and gurney, but like his fist, it hadn't bled profusely.

"And him as well." The medical examiner shuffled over to Sam, turning the sheet off his head. Garth squinted, looking at the fine scratches on the man's ashen cheeks.

"Those...aren't from—?"

"Fingernails," she said, shaking her head. "I swear these two had been in their coolers since you were last here. Security footage revealed no one coming in and tampering with them."

"Well they couldn't have done it to themselves," said Garth absently. Someone, or rather, something, was profaning the Winchesters' bodies. But why like this? Why not rip them to shreds and hang their spines up by their entrails like Christmas ornaments?

Garth shook his head. He didn't want to go to bed with that image on his mind.

"You're sure no one came in?"

"No, not a soul." A line creased her brow. "Although...there was one woman who called asking about one of them. A woman named Lilly. Lilly...Andersen."

Garth perked. "Andersen?"

Dr Corrigan nodded, birdlike. "Do you know her?"

"Not personally, no. One of my..." He gestured at Sam. His hand was shaking and he put it behind his back. "Companions spoke to her earlier. Before..." He nodded at the two corpses.

"Oh. Well, I told her I couldn't let her see them, not without permission from Detective Roberts or yourself. She gave me her contact information, if you want it."

"If you would be so kind, ma'am."

* * *

It was late, but Lilly Andersen was a night owl, it seemed. She answered on the third ring, an obvious hue of curiosity in her voice.

" _Hello? Can I help you?_ "

"Miss Andersen," said Garth pleasantly. "I'm Ranger Hank. Sorry for calling so late, but I wanted to ask—"

" _I told him not to go. I told him to stay away from that house_."

A long pause. "I'm sorry?"

" _That lawyer, 'Mr Sheppard.' I told him to stay away from Corvus Manor. And now he's dead, isn't he?_ "

Garth gripped the motel phone tightly. "Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid they are."

" _They?_ "

"S— Mr Sheppard and his...associate. They went to take a look at the place. Just to look. Their firm—"

" _They went there to find out what killed those other kids, ranger. You know this as well as I_."

Garth swallowed. She was sharp for an old woman. "I suppose there's no sense in denying it."

" _Damn straight, young man_."

"...Why did you call the morgue today, Miss Andersen?"

" _Please. Lilly_."

"Right. Lilly. How did you know about their deaths?"

" _I knew Mr Sheppard was going to go there despite my protests. It was only a matter of time before his body was found_."

"Why didn't you warn him?"

" _I did. I told him not to go. But I couldn't tell him why because I didn't know myself_."

Garth frowned. "Then what made you say—?"

" _Can we talk, ranger? In person?_ "

He glanced at the clock. "Um, sure. But can I get into your residence at this hour?"

" _No need. I'll meet you. Tell that tight-assed medical examiner to keep the morgue open_."

* * *

Lilly might be old and shake like a leaf, but she had all of her marbles, despite what the caretakers thought. Her "hallucinations," which only began to bother her in her twilight years, were not the signs of failing mental health. When they put her on the second floor of the retirement home, she took it on the chin, knowing that, sooner or later, she would get the opportunity to acquire one of the special keys needed to get off that floor. And she did.

The night shift didn't expect to see crazy old Lilly Andersen wandering out of the building, so they didn't. She reached the taxi she'd told to wait on the next block and it took her to the morgue. The extra large tip ensured no questions asked, and then she waddled around to the back, where the door had been left unlocked.

Ranger Hank was there to guide her to the room the two "lawyers" were kept in. He let her examine them, saying nothing, and within seconds she confirmed her own suspicions. These weren't legal beagles. They weren't pen-pushers of any kind. They were soldiers. But for whose army did they fight, that was the question.

"These injuries look fresh," said Lilly, pointing to Dean's punctured hand and sliced arm.

Garth shifted uncomfortably. "They are. They occurred postmortem. After they died."

"I know what postmortem means." She turned to Sam, brushing the fingernail scratches on his cheeks, and sighed.

"So young. What a burden they bear."

"Excuse me?" Garth stared at her.

"Stop pretending. I know what they are. What you are."

"I'm...a Texas r—"

Lilly turned to him, almond eyes blazing. "No, you're not. My entire family was killed either by the supernatural or those who hunt the supernatural. I know what it is when I see it."

He shuffled again. "Then let's start over. My name's Garth."

"And them?"

"Sam and Dean Winchester. Hunters. Best of the best."

She raised an eyebrow and looked down at them. "Not anymore." Her shakes were making her weary, and she sat down in the nearest chair, fiddling with her silver charm bracelet. "I take it you weren't with them when they died."

"No. I was going to meet them there. At the manor. I don't know what killed them."

"What makes you so sure they're dead?"

Garth froze. "I'm...sorry?"

"The other three who died, are they like this?"

"You mean dead? Yes, they're still dead too."

"Don't get snarky with me, boy. I mean almost unharmed at death, but getting new wounds later on."

"Can't say I've checked," Garth admitted. "The first part, yes. Dr Corrigan probably knows about the second. I'll call her."

Lilly studied him, his scrawny frame and quirky demeanour. He probably smiled all the time. But he wasn't smiling now.

"Don't look so sad, young man. Hope may be fragile, but it's very hard to kill."

He looked at her, and a look of understanding came over his face. "Then I hope you are right."


	14. Worm

**9:32**

* * *

~14~ Worm

The sun room was only attached to the manor by one side. The ceiling held two oval skylights, and the two side and far walls were constructed of panelled windows, which would give a wide, unobstructed view of the outside world from the comfort of your home. Or it would, if the fog would lift even a little.

The stone-tiled floor was set below ground level, and as the brothers stepped down onto it, they couldn't help but look up and around at the swirling grey fog, as though expecting to see something staring back. Surrounding them were pots that would have once held flowers or shrubs. Statuettes stood sentinel here and there among them; angels, dogs, an owl. Wicker chairs sat across from each other on either side of the room, which was longer than it was wide. In the far end, a tall, round game table stood, flanked by a pair of matching stools. On the table was a chess board. The pieces were set as though the players had simply gotten up and left in the middle of a game.

Dean shook off the feeling of being watched, and led the way towards the table. He took a quick scan of the board but, not being much of a player, didn't see any particular pattern.

"Just set it here somewhere, I guess."

Sam, feeling the nausea return, masked it expertly as he came alongside his brother. He rolled the black knight around and around in his hand, reading the game with a more critical eye. He moved closer.

"Watch your step."

Sam glanced down. One of the large stone tiles making up the floor had been pried out, and someone had dug a hole two feet deep.

"What's with that?"

Dean shrugged, kneeling and feeling around inside. "Hmph. Nothing down there. Maybe someone was trying to hide something."

"And somebody else found it?"

Again he shrugged before standing and brushing off his hand on his leg. "Let's get on with it. What do we do?"

"...Sit down."

Dean glanced at him, then obeyed, seating himself behind the white army. Sam took the other stool, wondering where he had to place the knight.

The answer came just as he set his rear down. As they watched, a white bishop slid diagonally across the board, stopping not far from the black king. Sam instantly saw the ambush.

"Say check," he muttered.

"What?"

"Check."

"Um...check?"

Sam nodded and leaned forward. "Edward never finished his game, because he needed this knight." Once he was sure of what he had to do, he placed said knight on the one square that would secure victory. "Checkmate."

For a moment it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room, and a low moan rolled through the house. Sam took it as a good sign...until his stomach clenched so hard he retched.

"Sam?" Dean stiffened, frowning.

He tried to smile, to suppress the nausea. "I'm fine. I'm— _uugh._ "

Dean scrambled around the table, nearly knocking it over as he tried to stop Sam from falling on his face, which had drained of all colour.

"Guh." Sam's guts roiled and writhed, worse than any flu or food poisoning he'd ever had. He pushed Dean aside with one arm to keep him out of firing range, knowing there was no holding back the tide this time. He cursed, landing on his hands and knees, then his stomach clenched again and he vomited.

"Oh my God." Dean couldn't look away. It wasn't bile or undigested food that spattered over the tiles. It was a pale, squirming, slimy tangle of _worms_.

Sam, as blanched as the wriggling creatures, moaned before more worms spewed from his throat, accompanied by globs of dirt. Strings of mucus trailed from his lips, coated his tongue. He stared at the worms in horror and revulsion, then heaved again.

And he began to see what came before.

 _He sat before a chessboard, staring at his white bishop, knowing where he had to put it to set a trap for black's king. But his opponent – himself – would then snap up the opportunity for a checkmate. Perhaps it was black's turn to win. There were, after all, no other logical moves for white to make, and the Edward playing white was distracted today._

 _Edward reached over and moved the bishop across the board, effectively boxing in the black king against a white rook and knight, with the queen overlooking the trap from afar._

 _"Check."_

 _Satisfied, he stood and made his way around the game table, seating himself behind the black army. He stared at his game with feigned thoughtfulness, then began to reach for the black knight that would turn the tide..._

" _Uncle Edward!"_

 _He looked over, raising an arm to block the morning sun, which was pouring in despite the morning mists, shining warm rays into the room. Flowers and shrubs cast spidery shadows on the stone-tiled floor. Then he forced a smile as young Richard scurried across the sun room towards him. Always these scamps were disrupting his game time._

 _"What is it, lad? Catch another insect?"_

 _His nephew stopped a few feet away, holding something behind his back. His knees and cheeks were filthy, and Edward had to withhold a frown of annoyance. His sister knew full well not to let the child outside these days. Something in the woods – bear, wolf, bobcat perhaps – had already claimed two staff members, and maybe even Pastor Gregory. None of them have been seen for months, whatever the reason._

 _Not that the house was any safer. Not with the lingering sickness that had obliterated three children, one of whom was Edward's daughter—_

 _"Guess what's in my hand," said Richard, grinning._

 _Edward's eyes narrowed. "A frog."_

 _"Nope!"_

 _"A pretty rock."_

 _"Nope! I'll give you a hint!"_

 _Pursing his lips slightly, Edward nodded._

 _"How's a crow like a writing desk?"_

 _"A crow? And a writing desk? Can't say I know." He knew the boy wouldn't be able to contain himself any longer, and preferred it when people couldn't figure out his little riddles._

 _Sure enough, three seconds later Richard lifted a black feather out from behind his back. Edward smiled._

 _"But of course."_

 _"Uncle, will you play hide and seek with me?"_

 _"Sorry, lad. My leg's acting up again. Perhaps another time. Why don't you go play Indian Hunt with your cousin?"_

 _Richard pouted, climbing onto the other stool and staring at the chess board. "We were playing that. Then we stopped."_

 _"Why?"_

 _He shrugged, then Edward saw the mischievous glint in his eye too late._

 _"Don't—"_

 _With a mad giggle, Richard grabbed the black knight, the chess piece that was supposed to secure victory, and ran from the sun room._

 _"Oi! Get back here, you little—" Edward grabbed his cane from where it was leaning against a stone dog and got to his feet. His leg trembled, pain shooting up from his knee to his hip. He grunted, leaning on the cane. The little ruffian was already gone._

Tap tap tap.

 _Edward scowled, then looked up. A bird, a crow, was standing on the oval skylight, pecking it._

Tap tap tap.

 _"Shoo. Go on, now."_

Tap tap.

 _It took off, winging its way east. He watched it go, only for something else to catch his eye._

 _A figure was standing out in the mist, just a few feet beyond the glass, blurred before the sun. Edward's brow furrowed and he stepped closer. It shifted, moving pale hands from before its face. Then, before he could comprehend what saw, his mind snapped._

 _He fell on his knees. Clawed at a floor tile. Nails ripped off and skin tore open. He had to get it out. Didn't know why. Didn't care. Had to get it out. Had to._

 _There. A firm grip. Tear it out. Good. Now dig. Dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig—_

 _There they are! Eat them. Eat them! Catch them, pull them out of their slimy holes and eat them! Dig some more!_

 _Stomach didn't want it. Threw everything up. Ate it again. Gotta keep them down. Eat dirt to keep them down. Then more worms. Eat eat eat eat eat eat—_

"Sam! Sam, stop, _please!_ "

Dean wrapped both arms around his brother's chest from behind, hand gripping forearm in an iron hold, and leaned back, trying to haul Sam away from the hole and the dirt and the worms. Sam struggled, filthy slime smeared around his mouth and nose and down his chin. Half chewed worm burst from between his lips, the severed parts still squirming. He elbowed Dean, again and again, and drove his heels into his brother's shins. Dean held on tighter.

"Knock it off, man!"

Why was he doing this? One moment he was upchucking annelids Dean was sure he hadn't eaten to begin with, the next he was shovelling them back down and digging for more! When a Winchester broke, it was never like this.

"God dammit, Sam, STOP!"

The brothers wrestled around on the floor, knocking over pots and stone statuettes. Sam's struggles became more and more frantic as some freaky drive compelled him to eat the worms. And it was this struggle that saved his life.

In his efforts to tear free, his legs knocked over the game table. Chess pieces scattered all over the floor, and suddenly, Sam stopped moving.

"Dean. You can let me go."

"You sure you're not gonna—?"

"I'm gonna hurl all over you if you don't let go right—"

Dean let go. Sam rolled away and didn't even try to keep whatever was still in him from coming out. He heaved until it was painful, spat until his mouth was dry. And then he let Dean guide him out of the sun room, all the way back to the foyer.

Dean looked almost as pale as his brother. "Care to explain?"

"Would if I could." Sam kept wiping his mouth and chin, getting slime all over his sleeves but not caring. Better there than on his face.

"Dude...what the hell."

"I don't know, Dean! How can I explain it? I'd felt sick ever since I...oh."

"What?"

"The knight. I'd felt sick ever since I picked up the knight from the kids' room."

"...Is that supposed to make sense?"

"It will once I tell you what I saw." Sam recounted everything he could recall from his vision, which had felt like several minutes but really must have been seconds. He shuddered at the memory of needing to eat the worms. It was as though his life had depended on it.

"Wait. What did Edward see? Before he lost his mind?"

Sam blinked, trying to remember. "Um...It... It looked like..." His frown deepened. What did it look like again? He ran a hand through his hair. "Jesus."

"It looked like Jesus?"

" _No_. I can't remember what it looked like."

"Seriously? You can't remember the next clue?" After all, what else could it be but a clue? Something whose very appearance curdled a man's gourd in an instant?

Sam glared. "I saw everything through Edward's eyes. He didn't know what it was either."

"Did you at least get a general shape? Was it standing up? Did it have feathers? Hooves? A friggin' _sombrero?_ "

Sam shut Dean out, closed his eyes, and dug further into his mind. Yes, the figure beyond the glass was standing up. It was facing him, moving its hands from before its face – he could just make out features, and—

He stopped, shivering. No. He couldn't look, not even in his mind. If he did he might lose his marbles like Edward did a hundred and fifty years ago. What had the power to do that?

"Whatever it is, Dean, I think it's the cause of all this."

"You mean we're not looking for an angry vengeful cheated wife witch?"

"No. Well, maybe she's involved..." He sighed in frustration. There were just too many holes!

Suddenly he noticed a strange bulge in Dean's jacket. "What's that?"

Dean looked down, then quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a tinderbox. "Damn, I forgot about this."

"What is it? Where did you get it?" Sam held out his hand, and Dean passed it over.

"In a desk in the master bedroom with Sweeney Todd."

Sam looked it over, Dean watching his face carefully for any signs of recognition. When there was nothing more than a frown of consternation, he felt only disappointment.

"I think it might be an Aboriginal language, but which one, I don't know. Cherokee, perhaps. Can't read it anyway."

"Great. You won't be able to open it," said Dean, even as Sam tried.

"Why?"

He shrugged. "But I figure ol' Pastor Gregory wanted us to find it. It was his key that unlocked the desk."

"And it was in the master bedroom. The bedroom Ariel Corvus would have used."

"So...we both thinking magic box?"

Sam lifted it up to his ear and shook it. Something rattled. "Possibly. But...well..."

"Well...?"

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. "Do...do you think we're actually here? I mean, literally, completely, not an out-of-body experience here?"

Dean bit his lip, then rubbed his jaw. "Yeah. Been thinking about that too. But my heart's beating and I can feel pain."

"Me too, but, Dean, these ghosts. The monster that looked like me. That thing in the closet. They aren't _normal_."

"What are you trying to say? We're in some other dimension?"

"I dunno, man." Sam looked out the window, but the fog was as thick as ever. He was starting to wonder if the fog was the _only_ thing out there.

He sighed and glanced at the thirteen-hour grandfather clock. Twenty to ten. Whatever this game was, they had less than three and a half hours left, until...until what? They were stuck?

"Did you find anything in the study?"

"What?" asked Sam, snapping out of his thoughts.

"In the study. Find anything?"

"No. We must have missed something somewhere. I mean we haven't even encountered everyone who lived here yet."

"We've seen Thomas and his mistress, uh..." Dean snapped his fingers. "Angelina. There were the three kids who were poisoned and one that drowned, plus Agnes." Dean was counting off on his fingers. "There were two other kids...I'm thinking one of them was in the crib upstairs." He paused, then shook his head. "The other was with your pal, Edward, who went crackers. And didn't you mention his sister dying in a riding accident?"

Sam nodded. "Whether or not that had anything to do with this curse, I don't know. Apparently something spooked her horse."

"Right. Then there were the two ghost chicks – one in the parlour and one in the master bedroom. I don't suppose you recognized them."

This time Sam shook his head. "The family tree I got had only names, no faces. But if I had to guess, I would say the psycho barber was Ariel, Thomas' wife."

"Her wrists had been slashed and her guts spilled. So, what, she kills her entire family, then bumps herself off?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean it's possible."

Dean glanced around, crossing his arms. "Still weird, though. That's a lot of people even without the staff. This place should be crawling with ghosts."

The very thought had Sam's hand tightening around the fire poker. "And we should be seeing our breath when they come around, but I haven't felt very cold at all. Have you?"

"No, not really."

Another uncomfortable stretch of silence, broken only by the manor's slow breathing. Finally Sam said, "We should check out the next floor."

"Tried that."

"Then we'll try again. Together."

Dean sighed, then nodded, lifting up the lantern and leading the way back to the second floor.


	15. Mutilation

**9:45**

* * *

~15~ Mutilation

The door leading to the third floor was obvious, with a knob set at chest height. When Dean turned it and pulled open the door, Sam peered in, seeking anything out of the ordinary. He could just barely make out the glint of a door knob at the top of the stairs.

"That wasn't there before," Dean muttered, noticing the same thing. Lifting the lantern higher, he set his foot on the first step. While he expected the staircase to extend before him to prevent any progress, Sam expected it to turn into a slide. Neither happened. The brothers were able to reach the next door without hindrance.

Dean paused, looking at the rose-patterned knob and the flaking paint around it, then at Sam, who nodded once. As though that had been the permission he needed, Dean took hold of the knob. His heart sank.

"Locked."

Sam deflated, then perked as Dean said, "Wait." He leaned closer to the keyhole, studying the rose patterns closer. "I have the key." He pulled a brass key from his pocket, a key with a rose shaped handle. "Got it from the bedroom I woke up in at the beginning of this fiasco." He slipped it into the keyhole, and felt both relief and dread as it clicked unlocked. Then, taking the knob once more, he pushed the door open.

The first word that popped into their heads when they stepped over the threshold: unwelcome. Next came dismal, neglected, and restricted.

The hall was narrow, barely wider than their shoulders, stretching off left and right. The air was stale and sickly sweet, like an old butcher shop. There were no mysteriously lit candles, no windows. Dean's was the only light, had probably been the only light seen there for countless years. The glowing bubble revealed worn, dusty boards underfoot and cracked plaster walls.

Sam pulled out his flashlight and clicked it on, facing the other way from his brother. "Never seen this on the top floor of any house, have you?" He was whispering. Why was he whispering?

Dean shook his head, stepping forward cautiously. His eyes moved ceaselessly, barely risking to blink. A few feet along he spotted a door. Boards had been nailed across it.

"Some old houses had secret rooms where people hid family members if they had mental illnesses, but this is taking that to a whole new level." Dean tried the door knob, but it was locked as well as barred. He continued on, glad Sam was there with his flashlight to watch his back.

They passed more doors, many boarded up or chained. The ones that opened revealed empty rooms. Not so much as a bed frame to be found. The purpose of this floor continued to elude them, even as the hunters came to an intersection.

"Why do I have the feeling we'll get lost in here?"

Sam winced, then put the flashlight between his teeth and used the fire poker to scratch a set of stairs and an arrow into the wall, pointing back from where they'd come. He took the flashlight out of his mouth. "There. That should help."

"Right. Good." Dean turned away, looking down the other three hallways. In his mind he tried to envision where they were in regards to the rest of the house. The stairs had been west of the foyer, and the brothers had turned right from the stairs. So they were in the west wing, over the dining room maybe.

He took the hall across from the one they'd just come from, Sam on his heels. But within twenty feet the passage simply stopped.

"Nothing. Go back."

Returning to the intersection, Sam scratched an X through the flaking paint. Then he heard a short scraping sound. Almost like old metal against old metal. He stiffened, shining the flashlight down the two other corridors. The light revealed nothing.

"How much do you wanna bet we're not the only ones looking for something up here?" said Dean from the corner of his mouth.

Sam cleared his throat uncomfortably, then chose the hallway heading south, right from the one they'd just explored. He tried every door, boarded or not, along the way. One of them was bound to get them somewhere, reveal some kind of clue.

They continued on this way, marking as they went, taking turns leading. The halls were so narrow and the rooms so small, there was space for many of each. It was a labyrinth. And then finally, finally, they found something of interest.

It was another door at the end of another hallway, but it was different. Markings had been scratched into the frame, and into the walls, floor and ceiling around it. They were the same characters as those on the tinderbox from the master bedroom. A First Nation's language in written form, Sam had said. And they had no way to translate it.

"Does it seem like this door is saying, 'No. Stop. Get away' to you?"

Sam nodded tightly, a muscle jumping in his jaw. "If it's warded, then is it trying to keep us out?"

"Or something else in," Dean finished. He pushed out a breath. "I'm gonna _strangle_ Garth for this one."

He advanced, Sam right behind him. As they approached, they became aware of a humming sound. It grew louder as they drew nearer, tingling deep in their ears, almost like electricity. And, although their lights made it difficult to notice at first, the glyphs and letters were beginning to glow.

When Dean reached for the handle, the letters around it glowed brightest, a fiery yellow that smouldered gently.

"Um, Dean, I don't think you should—"

"Agh!" Dean released the handle, waving his hand around. "It's hot!"

Sam pursed his lips but said nothing of it. "Guess we can't go in yet."

Dean growled and kicked the door. "There's nothing else up here."

"We haven't checked the east wing yet," said Sam patiently. "One of these other rooms will have something."

Dean sent him a glower, then pushed (or more like squeezed) past him, leading back the way they came. Mind roiling, he didn't realize he'd returned to the first intersection they'd come to and overshot the hallway with the stairs.

"Dean." Sam turned into the correct corridor. "This way."

The elder hunter stopped, blinked, and shook his head before turning around...only to stop cold.

"Sam."

"What...? Oh no."

Bars had materialized. Rusty, thick, vertical bars with spaces barely wide enough to stick an arm through had seemingly grown out of the floor, blocking the corridor leading to the stairs. And Dean was on the wrong side.

"No. No, no!" Dean turned his back on the three other hallways despite instincts telling him not to, grasping the bars. He tried to pull them loose, Sam doing the same from the other side. None of them budged an inch.

"The hell did this come from?"

"I don't know." Sam attempted to used the fire poker to pry the bars apart. But he only bent the poker. He stared at it, then huffed. "Wonderful." Letting it fall to the floor, he went back to yanking and twisting at the bars with his hands, grunting with the effort.

"Sam. Sam, shush a moment."

The younger man stopped to listen, and Dean turned around, gazing down each hallway carefully.

 _Thud_. Drag. _Thud_. Drag.

"S-something's coming. Sam, something's coming!"

"Where?" Sam pressed his face to the bars, trying to get a good look.

"Never mind where! Get me out of here!"

 _Thud._ Drag. _Thud_. Drag.

Sam and Dean struggled fruitlessly, unable to get a single bar to even wiggle. They gasped with the effort, hearts pounding painfully.

Sam growled and paused to break, slamming the heel of his hand against the bars. "There's gotta be a way around."

Dean turned, looking down each corridor again. The stench of rotting meat intensified.

 _Thud._ Drag. _Thud._ Drag.

Thud.

Somehow, the silence was worse. Dean crouched to pick up the lantern, other hand drawing the revolver from his waist. He was scowling but his hand was shaking, and he could not use his left to steady it, else the lantern light-blind him.

Finally, after several seconds staring, he could make something out in the gloom.

It was near the floor, a pale, upside down U-shaped figure. He took a step closer and realized it was two arms propping up shoulders and a head. Its flesh was rotten and pitted, as though infested with mites, with lesions and punctures and clear signs of torture. It was mostly bald, what hair remaining matted and yellow. Its nose had been cut off, adding to the skull-like appearance, and its eyes had been gouged out.

Worse of all, however, was its lack of mouth. Its jaw was gone, a tongue hanging loose from an open throat. No upper lip covered its remaining teeth.

If this thing was a spirit, then it had lasted a long, _long_ time before death finally came. Dean almost felt sorry for it.

Then the thing – man, woman, whatever it was – sniffed. It was loud, air rasping through the open slits that were its nose. And then it let out a wail, a mixture between tearing metal and an animal in extreme pain.

"Holy sh—" Dean raised the gun as the thing began to crawl towards him. Around its hands, the floorboards rotted and smoked.

"Shoot it!" Sam screamed.

Dean checked his breathing and aimed the revolver at its head.

 _BANG!_

With a screech it keeled over, crimson bursting from its forehead. Where blood landed, it burned like acid. The thing flopped onto its back, exposing a white chest riddled with sores and cuts. As it writhed, Dean took a step closer, staring at the wounds. They were all tiny crosses, sliced, punctured, and branded into its flesh.

"Sam. I think we found Pastor Gregory."

Suddenly the tortured thing wailed and flipped back onto its hands, once more scrambling for Dean. And it moved _fast_.

 _BANG! BANG! Click-click-click_...

The chambers were empty.

The creature paused. It drew a hand across the gushing bullet wounds, then whipped its arm out, as though throwing something. Dean felt the acidic blood hit his face before he could cover himself, and he screamed, trying to wipe it off with his sleeve.

The pastor laughed, a cold, maniacal sound, before crawling towards him again.

" _Run, Dean!_ "

And Dean did run. He knew he couldn't let that thing touch him.

Sam watched the lantern light start to fade, then picked up the fire poker. As the creature that had once been the pastor crawled by, he stuck his arm through the bars and stabbed it in the back, pinning it to the floor.

Its scream made him want to cover his ears. It writhed, clawing at the floor to get free. Sam gritted his teeth, pouring all his strength into his arm to buy Dean as much time as he could.

With revulsion he was able to see the rest of the creature from the glow of the flashlight. Its legs were skinny and looked to be broken in several places. They were useless, could only be dragged behind the rest of its body. A massive cross, stretching down its spine and across its shoulders, had been sliced into its flesh and then roughly sewn shut.

Was it Pastor Gregory? But how? Was he not killed in the parlour?

Sam had no time to dwell on it, for it suddenly turned to him, its blue-black, slimy tongue lolling from its jawless head, wailing its inhuman wail. He yanked the poker out of its back and tried to stab it again, only to realize the end of it was gone. Dissolved in the acidic blood.

The pastor twisted and lunged, a skeletal arm shooting between the bars and seizing his collar. He grabbed its wrist to twist it away, only to scream, feeling like his hand had been dipped in boiling oil. He reared back, falling on his backside and scrambling away. The thing yowled, grasping the bars, which smoked odorously. Then it turned and continued its pursuit of Dean, vanishing into darkness.

Sam looked at his left palm, wincing. It was red and weepy, missing the top layer of skin in some places, as though the flesh were decaying. He felt a coolness around his upper chest, and looked down at his shirt and jacket. Both had holes where the pastor grabbed him. They had rotted.

 _Just be glad that's all it touched_ , he thought, brushing his burned hand against his jeans. It wasn't spreading, and for that he was grateful.

 _Now find another way to the west wing._

Sam picked up the flashlight and the remains of the fire poker, and trotted down the hall. He passed the door to the stairs, which had been left open, and then slowed. The stench of old, rancid meat was still thick in his nostrils.

There could be more of those things. More tortured remains. Sam steeled himself and quickened pace again. Dean needed help. Sam was the one with the iron – he could handle any ghosts.

Wait. What was that?

He held his breath. Yes, there was definitely a noise. Fritzing. Spitting. He took a step closer, turning his head to zero in on the sound. He swept the floor with the light until something glinted back. He stared at it for several seconds, but he was sure it was a small, handheld radio.

Sam frowned. The radio hissed. Sometimes it tried to speak, but the words were lost to the static.

He approached it slowly before kneeling and picking it up. It looked ancient, but undamaged. And, he realized, it wasn't just a small radio, it was a transceiver, a design likely of the late-twentieth century and thus too young to be in Corvus manor.

 _But then, so is my flashlight_ , Sam thought warily.

He fiddled with the dial, trying to clear the noise. Instead, it went dead.

 _Better keep it anyway. Might be a clue._

He tucked it into his jacket. It was heavy, bumping into his side as he moved. Sam picked up the fire poker and stood, aiming the flashlight down the hall. It ended. No. It intersected another hall.

Every step creaked. Every breath sounded like a gust of wind. At the end, Sam paused, shining the light left, and then right. There, a mound of chairs, tables, and other bits of furniture had been crammed into the hall, from floor to ceiling, completely blocking the way. Odd.

And then his mind caught up to what his eyes had seen when he'd looked left. He looked there again, squinted, and saw something just outside the reach of his light.

It was humanoid, but something was wrong. Tall, skinny as a rake and blanched, it held itself in a way that suggested pain, listing towards the right. Something long and sharp was in its left hand. He couldn't see its face.

The radio squealed and sputtered. Sam jumped and looked down at his middle. A mistake. When he lifted the flashlight again, the gangling figure had closed half the distance between them, and was now well within the light's reach.

Sam recoiled. He still couldn't see its face, because it didn't have one. Just a lipless mouth with long, stained teeth. Ragged, bloodstained bandages were wrapped around the rest of its head, the lack of lumps suggesting the absence of ears and a nose.

As he brandished the fire poker, its teeth began to chatter, clicking together as though cold. Sam stood his ground. He had to find a way to get to Dean, fast, and that meant going through this thing.

"Stay back!" He took a step forward. Then _it_ took a step forward. It was awkward, jerky, its whole body wracked with spasms. Raw lesions wept all over its mutilated frame. And, Sam realized, it wasn't holding something sharp in its left hand. Its arm was long, almost touching the floor, and ended in a sharp, black-tipped point.

Sam had no idea what kind of torture could create such a thing, and he could only hope it _was_ torture and that it had mutated a human into this monster. If it wasn't a human, then it wasn't a ghost, and he was screwed.

It kept coming, jerking and twitching as though every step was agony, and for a moment, Sam felt only pity.

But then it lurched towards him, screeching, lifting its pointed limb to impale him. Sam dodged to the side and stabbed at its head with the remains of the fire poker. It wailed, thrashing around, trying to tear the tool free of its flesh.

"Okay. Not a ghost. _Not_ a ghost." He took slow steps backwards, retreating towards the stairs. The floor creaked. Sam froze, then watched the monster slowly turn to him, the poker hanging from the tattered flesh of its face.

"Crap."

He went for his knife too late. The thing lunged, reaching for him. Sam ducked, then slammed the heel of his hand into where its heart should be. It was like punching rotten fruit. The creature squealed but latched onto Sam, chattering teeth inches from his ear. He threw himself at the wall, once, twice, three times, crushing it against the plaster again and again. Finally, it released him, falling in a heap, leaving a dark flower dripping down the wall.

Sam stepped back, panting. Was it dead?

It wasn't moving. He covered his nose in revulsion and stepped closer, studying it with the flashlight. The fire poker was still stuck to its face.

He stared at the iron tool. It had been the only one he found in this Godforsaken manor. And he wasn't about to lose it now.

Slowly, slowly, he knelt, grasping the handle. Tattered flesh clung to the tip as he gave it a tug.

There was no warning before the monster thrashed and flailed, limbs going everywhere. Too slow to react, Sam cried out as a long gash opened across his pectoral, and he retreated, pressing a hand to the wound. The thing squealed like an evil swine, standing and attacking him with its tapered left arm again. It was like trying to fend off a sword – Sam kept backing up, ducking and dodging.

He needed a weapon. Something other than the knife. He remembered the stack of chairs and tables back up the corridor, blocking the way. There was bound to be something there he could break off and use.

The monster was blind. But it knew when the man turned tail and fled. It grabbed the walls on either side with all four limbs, like a spider in its tunnel of web, and scuttled after him.

Just before he reached the pile of furniture, it caught him. Pounced on him, dragged him down. It needed to stop him from running. So it bit his thigh, near his hip, clamping its jaws tighter and tighter until clothing tore and skin burst. The man screamed. The monster squealed in pleasure and gnawed on the chunk of flesh. It would chew his legs off. _Then_ he wouldn't be able to run anymore.

But then its sounds of glee twisted into wails of pain as something stabbed its back.

Sam yanked the knife out, then attacked the monster again. Blood spattered everywhere and still the thing wouldn't die. Agony ripped through his right thigh, and the pain made him angry. As he stabbed the monster again, he dragged it to the side, off of him, and kicked it in the teeth with the flat of his foot.

It fell back, thrashing. Sam rolled over, pushing himself up. He used the wall to keep his balance, trying not to put weight on his leg as he hobbled past it and into the hall with the stairs. He could just see the open door...

He didn't get far. Something struck him between the shoulders and he fell, barely catching himself with his hands before his face hit. The knife and flashlight landed somewhere up ahead. He felt the monster grab him by the hair. Crying out, he reached up to try and pry the fingers off. The creature pinned his chest down with its pointed limb, which gradually drove between his ribs.

"No!" Sam could see the knife. He could reach it! But the monster was pulling his head back, keeping his chest down flat. Agony seared up and down his spine like fire, his breaths escaping in weak gasps.

When his neck broke, would he die instantly? Or would he live long enough to feel the creature rip his head off?

Neither. Because in a moment of fortune, his hand found the knife and he slashed back with it. It sliced across the thing's leg and it screeched, releasing his hair and falling away.

He relished a wave of relief, but the pain returned and it jolted sense back into his muddled mind. He dragged himself forward before picking up the flashlight and getting to his feet. He stared at the monster, which had bent over, licking the blood pouring from its own leg. Sam tried not to gag, limping for the stairs again.

He would make a torch. He would use one of the few remaining matches to make a large, blazing torch that no thing from the dark would withstand. Then he would return here and save his brother.

But like before, the monster knew he was trying to get away. It stopped feasting on its own fluids and loped after him. It, too, was slowed by its wound, but although its lack of humanity allowed it to keep a fair pace, Sam's fear urged him faster. He reached the door, limped around it, into the stairway. He pulled the door shut and locked it.

Locked it. With his brother on the other side.

Sam felt nothing but contempt for himself. But he could hear the creature scrambling around on the other side, trying to figure out where he went. It huffed and squealed in frustration.

He released a breath. At least it couldn't figure out doors—

The tip of its pointed arm burst through the wood, stopping an inch before his eyes. Sam cursed and threw himself back. His foot found nothing but air. It was a long, painful fall down the stairs, and when he reached the bottom, consciousness had abandoned him.


	16. Prisoner

**10:18**

* * *

~16~ Prisoner

Dean was lost in the labyrinth that was the third floor. There seemed to be more passages than before, but then, he was only focused on avoiding dead-ends now. The X's Sam had scratched into the walls were invaluable.

But for all his haste, the thing that had once been Pastor Gregory crawled after him with unnatural speed, never seeming to fall behind by even a foot. Its wail burrowed into his head like a parasite, stimulating his adrenaline to unstable levels.

 _Get a grip, Winchester. Get a grip!_

He ripped around a corner. In the mad swinging of the lantern, he saw a slit of darkness to his left. An open door. There was probably nothing behind it, but he would run himself to the ground like a rat in a cage if he didn't find somewhere to stand his ground.

He charged at it head-on, one arm ahead to push the door open more. It met resistance and he slammed into it before bouncing off, stunned. Regaining his balance, he glanced back the way he had come. He could hear the monster following, hands slapping against bare wood.

Dean set himself against the door and pushed. Something scraped along the floor on the other side. Someone had braced it almost shut. But he could move it, and Dean went to it with a will.

"Come on," he grunted. The monster was almost around the corner. "Go!"

Finally, it was open just wide enough for him to slip through. He saw the pastor crawling towards him just as he slammed the door shut. The pastor screeched in rage, clawing it, but Dean moved the object that had been barring it shut before – a dresser – back to its place. No way that thing could get through now.

Right?

It seemed to realize the same thing. It shut its demonic howling and scratched around outside, as though looking for another way in. Dean concentrated on slowing his rapid heart, which was beating so fast it was painful.

He couldn't understand it. He'd faced many different monsters, sometimes unprepared, and never had he lost control like that. He had completely separated himself from his best weapon: Sam's companionship. Not that there had been much choice – those bars did most of the work. And now he had no bullets, and the crazy acid-blood thing chasing him was clearly no spirit. So what was it?

He flinched at the sound of footsteps. Loud, heavy, and deliberate, they weren't Sam's. He didn't walk like that even when angry. The inhuman wailing started up again, but pitifully, fearfully. The footsteps stopped somewhere outside the door, and with a soft thud, the wailing stopped too.

Dean swallowed and approached the door, turning his head to hear better. There was the sound of material, like a sack opening and something being shoved inside. Then the footsteps walked away, dragging the sack behind. Dean dared not breathe until he heard nothing more.

He shivered. He'd heard those footsteps before. Seemed like the pastor creature was a prisoner, and escaped on a regular basis only for Paul Bunyan to come by and drag it back.

Straightening, he became aware of the burns on his face again, courtesy of the pastor. With every second they stung a bit more. Gingerly, he touched the jagged line of blisters running up across his face, chin to forehead. The ones beside the side of his mouth and nostril stung the most, and it was a miracle nothing had hit his eye.

Although he had escaped the pastor, he felt that he'd lost that confrontation. He was hurt, unarmed, and alone.

Dean grunted to himself. No sense in dwelling on it. He would wait several minutes, then venture out and find his way back to Sam. Now, however, was probably a good time to check out the room.

Raising the lantern, Dean turned around. The space was so small, the light reached every corner easily. The walls were of plaster, damaged in many places to expose wooden lath. The window had been completely boarded up from the inside. Besides the dresser in front of the door, there was only one other piece of furniture – a round-backed stool, which was lying on its side not far away.

There was no other way in or out of the room.

"So what moved the dresser in the first place?" Dean began to feel along the walls, expecting to find a hidden door, perhaps a crawl space. Either the person who'd last been in here was Flat Stanley, or they had a secret way out.

As he approached the toppled stool, he noticed an odd black lump on the floor. He squinted and stepped closer, only to grimace. A crow. A dead one.

"Ugh. Sucks to be you, man."

Just as he began to turn, he saw it twitch. Then he recoiled as it suddenly flipped over, greasy black wings flapping to regain its balance. It cawed at him as he stared, bewildered.

"Just when I thought I'd seen everything."

It hopped onto the leg of the stool and began to preen, pausing every few seconds to stare at him with a glossy black eye.

"What you in for?" Dean asked. Naturally, it didn't answer.

But if the crow got in, then there had to be a way out. Right? Dean's search, however, turned up nothing. Just another useless room. Even the dresser was empty.

"Alright. Here I come, Sammy." He pressed his ear to the door, listening for anything evil. Then he dragged the dresser away and opened the door, sticking his head out and listening some more.

He nearly jumped out of his skin as the crow burst into flight and landed on his shoulder, cawing. This close, he could see that it was emaciated, feathers matted, and one foot had no skin. It was just bare bones. He brushed it off.

"Scram."

It squawked irritably, flapping frantically, only to land on his other shoulder. It reeked of death.

Gagging, Dean knocked it off again, then rushed out of the room, pulling the door shut. The raucous cries were cut off, and he relaxed. He turned around, only to see the crow on the floor in front of him.

" _Awk!_ " it cried.

"Wow, you're good."

It flew up onto his shoulder again, preening smugly.

"Fine. Just button your beak."

Trying not to breathe through his nose, Dean began to retrace his steps, following the marks Sam had made on the walls. The crow half opened its wings to keep its balance as he broke into a trot. Every so often he paused, listening. But he was alone. Well and truly alone.

Except for the damn bird.

"Ow! Hey!"

He tried to brush it off his shoulder after it jabbed his ear with its beak, but it pecked his fingers.

" _Awk!_ "

"Shush!" Dean froze, listening again. Still nothing. Starting off once more, he finally came to where he'd left Sam – at the solid bars blocking the way.

Or else, not so solid.

He knelt, touching the corroded, rusty sections that had definitely not been like that before. When he squeezed one, it shattered. Brown, brittle flakes crumbled in his hand. But how...?

"Gift horse," he muttered. He stood and kicked at the rotten sections, making a gap large enough for him to crawl through. Once on the other side, he brought the lantern through and straightened, dusting off his free hand. The undead crow followed him, strutting around on the floor.

"...Sam?"

He must have gone to find another way. Still, Dean was cautious, ears straining, stepping carefully. When he came to the door leading downstairs, he was unnerved to see it shut.

"Sam?"

Dean flinched again as the crow flew past his ear, then blinked as it banked sharply – and flew straight through the door as though it wasn't there.

"...Ghost birds, now, eh?"

Approaching the door, he jiggled the handle. Locked. Then he noticed the hole in the wood that had definitely not been there before, at head height. He stood on tiptoe and peered through the jagged hole.

There was a white glow down there. A flashlight?

"Sam," he hissed. " _Sam_."

He heard the crow caw somewhere down there, then silence. Dean grumbled in frustration. The door was locked from the other side and opened towards the hallway. He had no lock picks and he couldn't kick the door down from this side.

But a big fancy house like this would have more than one way to get to and from the third floor, he reasoned. He just had to look harder.

Steeling himself, Dean marched to the east wing.

Ω

"Can't get a hold of her." Garth tucked his cell phone away for the fifth time and stifled a yawn that threatened to break loose. "She must be asleep somewhere."

Lilly Andersen was standing vigil by the door of the examination room. She didn't appear tired at all. "Do you know this Dr Corrigan well?"

Garth rubbed his eyes and slumped on a swivel chair. "Just met her today. I think she was a little freaked out by this case. She probably thinks some sick prankster has been coming in here to mess with bodies...Somehow without being caught on camera."

"Do you think that's what's happening?"

Garth stared at the back of her head. "What else—?"

"Check the short one for me, will you?"

"You mean Dean?"

"Yes, I mean Dean."

Garth moved reluctantly at the shrouded gurney bearing the older Winchester. He drew the sheet off Dean's face, and recoiled. A line of raw flesh and yellow blisters stretched from the left side of his jaw up past his right eyebrow, as though splashed with boiling oil.

"What in tarnation?"

"And now the other," said Lilly.

Garth turned around, and was startled to see fresh scarlet had blossomed in two places on the stark white sheet veiling Sam's body. He tugged the sheet off Sam's face and upper body, exposing a gash across his left pectoral. The edges were jagged, like the skin had been torn rather than sliced.

"That's a new one," Garth muttered. His face was as pale as a trout's belly. The other red blotch was near Sam's hip, and when he checked there, he felt dinner churn in his stomach.

"My God."

It looked like someone had bitten Sam's leg. Yes. Someone, not something. They were human teeth marks, yet they had punctured deeply, as though the teeth were the right shape but exceptionally long.

Garth stepped back, woozy. "Yep. That's new as well."

"And I'm sure you didn't do that to him while my back was turned," said Lilly, still at the door. She cackled. A mirthless sound. It was happening. The nameless fear that had she thought was locked away in her mind was coming to light. She'd always had a bad sense about Corvus Manor. The recent five deaths weren't the only ones to occur since the place was abandoned, but medical advancements and new protocols prevented bodies from being burned or buried as soon as they were discovered. When the living essences of these people, wherever they were, got hurt, it reflected on their bodies. A truly unique phenomena, even in the supernatural planes.

It gave her hope. But it also filled her with dread. No doubt these young men were better off dead.

"I'm getting too old for this shite."

Lilly turned to see Garth leaning his hands on a counter, head down, trembling almost as badly as she did. She sought consolatory words, but before she could grasp them, he turned to her, frowning.

"You said earlier that your entire family was killed by the supernatural or those that hunt the supernatural."

"...Yes, I did."

"So your parents, grandparents...?"

She met his eyes unflinchingly. "You know full well that all but one who lived in that manor a hundred fifty years ago died."

"Check."

"The one who escaped was my great-grandmother, Agnes."

"Check."

"She had a daughter, who had a son, who fathered me."

"Check."

"My dad and grandmother were hunted down as witches. Agnes vanished long before."

Garth blinked. "Not-checked. Does...that mean you're...?"

She smiled sadly. "If I was, would I be suffering as I do with this infernal disease?"

"Guess not." Garth looked away. "So. Witchcraft is involved with the Corvus massacre?"

"Dad seemed to think so. He never told me much about it. He tried to keep his powers, minor as they were, under control, especially after he met my mum." She left out a humoured snort. "The stories she used to tell. Of her people. They would scare the hell out of me. Probably because some were true."

"What kind of stories?"

"Old Cherokee legends. Not sure if I can recall most of them..." She paused thoughtfully, then shook herself. "Doesn't matter now. Those stories didn't save her. Hunters saw to that."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You didn't do it and I know not all hunters are the same. I just wish they had been more...thorough."

Garth recoiled. "You don't mean—?"

"No, I don't mean me. I mean they missed something when they killed my parents and grandparents and left the manor untouched. _That_ was the root of the problem. Not my family's white witchcraft."

"Lilly." He moved closer to her. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Not— not sure yet? What does that mean?"

"Be a dear and try Dr Corrigan's cell again, Garth. There's a good boy."


	17. Beyond

**10:34**

* * *

~17~ Beyond

Sam groaned and sat up gingerly. He felt a lump behind his ear, hair matted with dried blood. He blinked away dizziness, quelled nausea. How long had he been out?

"Dean?"

He remembered too late where Dean was. Tensing, he stood up – and left his body on the floor.

"...Oh no."

He stared down at himself, sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, flashlight a few feet away. Large, dark stains had spread across his shirt and pant leg, evidence of battle wounds. He wasn't moving.

"No, no, no!" Sam gripped his body's jacket and shook it violently. "Wake up!" He almost started to pound on its chest, to make its heart beat, when he realized it was breathing. He wasn't dead.

Sam looked at his hands, still gripping the jacket, and quickly let go, turning them over. They were faded around the edges, the tips of his fingers semi-transparent. Ghosts were defined, appearing to be solid most of the time. So what was this? Some kind of out-of-body experience?

He stood up, feeling a lot lighter than usual. Like he could jump five feet into the air. The ground felt solid enough, but the more he looked around, the harder it became to focus.

Then, he started to see through walls.

They were glimpses, like camera flashes briefly dissolving the walls to expose the rooms beyond. Sam blinked and rubbed his eyes. But even with his eyelids closed he could still see parts of the manor he shouldn't be able to. Down over there was the grandfather clock in the foyer, and the library, and the smashed piano in the music room beyond that. There was the kitchen, dining hall, sun room. On the second floor, where he was, he thought he caught a glimpse of the toy room, but it was difficult to make out through the rooms between. It was like a computerized reconstruction of the manor, and glitches made the walls flicker in and out of sight.

So he fell down the stairs, lost consciousness, woke up out of his body with omniscient vision? No, not quite omniscient. Some spaces remained dark, no matter how hard he tried to see through. When he approached the door of one of these spaces, he found it locked, the keyhole corroded.

"Maybe I can only look into rooms I'd already been to..." But that wasn't it either. Sam didn't recognize most of the bedrooms in the west wing, because he never explored there.

 _A crazy dream. That's all this is. Wake up, Winchester._

But he didn't wake up. His body remained prone at the foot of the stairs, helpless. And Dean. Where was Dean?

He turned his gaze upward, X-ray vision making out the labyrinth of hallways of the third floor. He searched for as long as he could, but the flickering glimpses were making his eyes ache, and he looked down to rest them. But then his attention was caught by one of the dark spaces below.

Unlike the other dark spaces, this one _roiled_ with darkness, tendrils whipping out like black solar flares. It was near the kitchen, somewhere beneath it. Below ground level.

As he stared, he could almost swear he saw something staring back—

" _Awk!_ "

Sam startled. A crow flew out of the stairwell he'd fallen from and landed beside his unconscious body.

"Where did you come from?"

It pecked his cheek. Sam's body felt it, so he felt it.

"Ow! Hey, cut it out!" He tried to nudge the bird away, but his shoe went through it. Cawing, the crow flapped onto the chest of Sam's body, head cocking this way and that, before hopping onto the face. He felt cold talons pressing into his mouth and nose. It turned its head to look down at the closed eyes, then cawed again.

"Don't even think about it. Scram."

Finally, it raised its head and looked straight at him. For reasons unknown, that unnerved him, but he scowled.

"I said go away."

"I heard you."

Sam spun around again, to see the young girl in the black dress, who called herself Agnes. She had aged again. Probably a good two years older since she appeared to him in the study, and five years older since the brothers first spotted her in the foyer.

"...You can see me?"

"Yes." Her eyes were too dark. Like the crow's. And her dress had a feathery sheen. She cocked her head. "You look scared. Are you scared?"

"Um, yeah, a little."

She shrugged and looked at the floor. "Everyone who comes here are. And they never figure it out in time."

"Figure out what?"

She looked up. "Where you are."

"...Corvus Manor."

Agnes sighed. "That's what they all think. It's close, but not close enough."

Sam's mind whirled. If he didn't ask the right questions quickly enough, she might disappear again. And he needed answers.

"You helped us in the past. Will you help us now?"

She frowned. "They left you clues. Follow them."

"We have been! But we're running out of time. Please, if you could just..." Sam clenched his jaw, released a breath. "We want to help. We know your family is trapped here somehow. But some of them are dangerous, and it's slowing us down."

She huffed, hands on her hips. "The answer is right here, boy! Open your eyes."

Sam shivered. Her voice sounded adult just then.

"They are. Open. I can see into the rooms. But not all."

"Good. What does that tell you?"

"...It's not real?"

"Naturally."

"Then what is it?"

She huffed again and slapped her hands down to her sides. "Don't they teach you hunters anything?"

"How did you know I was—?"

" _Your_ mind is free. Look around you. I mean _really_ look. And don't come back until I'll be happy with what you see."

"Don't come back? What...?" Sam's jaw clicked shut at her look. Those eyes did not leave room for back talk. If this _was_ Agnes Corvus, sole survivor of the Corvus massacre, then there was a big piece of the puzzle he and Dean needed to find.

Sam turned around, looking into all the rooms he could. Nothing new there.

 _But those dark spaces. Why can't I see into them? Are they warded?_

 _Or is there simply nothing there to see?_

Something about that thought made Sam turn towards the front door, faintly seen through the flickering walls. They reminded him of holograms, reinforcing his belief that this place wasn't real. He pictured himself walking out the front door, out into the fog. And suddenly, he was there.

There was no garden, no sky, no ground beneath his feet. It was all fog, silent and opaque. He moved forward, but felt no forward movement. He could see something appearing...

Chain. Endless stretches of chain rising up from below, into the sky. They were connected in a random pattern like a poorly-made net. Sam closed his eyes, pictured this as a small section of a large photo, and zoomed out as though the photo were on a cell phone. He was able to see that the chains formed a spherical cage around the entire manor, floating in the fog.

 _What the hell...?_

Sam opened his eyes and his view shrank again. He stared at the dark chains, which, he realized, were engraved with runes he didn't recognize. He looked past them, to the space beyond. There was something out there...several somethings...

He reached out and touched the chain. With a crack like a whip he was sent back into the house, back beside his unconscious body. He staggered and fell, hitting the wall.

"What the hell was that?" he gasped.

Agnes stared dispassionately at him. "You touched the boundary, didn't you." Not a question.

"What was it? All that fog, those chains surrounding us."

"I'll give you a hint. All are connected, but few can access it."

Sam stood, growling in frustration. "How is that supposed to help? Give me another."

"Look around you again. And really focus."

Shaking his head, Sam obeyed, seeking anything new from thirty seconds ago.

The walls flickered in and out of view as usual, but for longer now, allowing him better glimpses of the rooms they contained. But they weren't just empty rooms anymore. Now people were inside.

There was Edward, playing chess in the sun room. Ariel, in the nursery. Three kids were in the children's room, gathered around something he couldn't see. The more Sam looked, the more people he saw. Maids, cooks, cleaners, wandering around aimlessly. None of them looked hostile or even crazy. Just...lost.

"Is this some kind of Limbo?"

Agnes shrugged. "Not really. They are trapped, just not between Heaven and Hell."

"They're dead."

"Yes."

"But they're not ghosts."

"No."

"Are they...souls?"

She shook her head, rueful. "I don't know where the souls are. They are hidden from me."

"Wait. Is that what you're looking for? Is that why you're here?"

Agnes blinked, staring at him. It was an open look, a look a student gives a teacher when she simply didn't know the answer.

"I...I don't remember what I'm looking for."

"Well..." Sam shuffled. "I'm sure you'll know it when you find it. But hey, my brother and I are here to help free your family, so—"

"Their bodies are gone. They can never live again. Never finish their lives."

"I know, but—"

"And if you're not quick, neither will you."

Sam felt a stirring of unease. "What do you mean?"

"Your body is still alive. Somewhere else."

He pointed to his unconscious form. "I'm right here."

"No. Not really." Agnes yawned, rubbing her eye with a fist. "I'm getting tired."

"Wait, don't go yet." _Come on, Sam, think! If these people wandering around aren't souls, or ghosts, or revenants, then what are they? Manifestations. Projections. Projections of what? Memory?_

Memory. Mind. Awareness. Consciousness. Slowly the pieces fell into place, and Sam blinked.

"Is this the Collective Unconscious?"

Finally, the little girl smiled. "Maybe you are smart enough to defeat this." She started to turn away.

"Wait! How is this possible? Witchcraft?"

She stiffened. "That's...part of it." Her voice started to sound mature again. Sam's skin crawled.

"Then what's the other part?"

She turned to him, then pointed dolefully at the writhing dark mass below the kitchen. "In the basement's basement, terrors creep. Meet not his eye for your mind to keep." She started to walk away again. "You need to wake up now. The longer you stay, the more you will see, and you'll never get out."

"But how?"

"Wake up."

"Hey, tell me who did this!"

" _Wake up!_ "

"Wake up, Sammy!"

Somebody was smacking his cheek none-too-gently. Sam's eyes snapped open, and he would have sat up had a firm hand not pinned him to the floor by the shoulder.

"Whoa, easy. Took quite the nasty tumble there, crazy-legs."

"Dean?" His head throbbed and he turned it away from the light.

"Sorry." Dean moved the lantern behind him, then helped him sit up. "Take it slow."

Sam released his breath all at once and touched the back of his head, where the lump was. After the pain subsided a bit, he turned to his brother. "You are not gonna believe what I saw."


	18. Pulse

**10:47**

* * *

~18~ Pulse

"The Collective Unconscious?" said Dean incredulously. He crossed his arms, leaning against the wall in the foyer. "The hell is that?"

Sam was sitting on the stairs, resting the leg bitten by the monster on the third floor. Dean had staunched the bleeding while he was senseless, and now it was bound with cloth napkins from the dining room. He could walk, but it hurt.

"There's a theory that every mind is connected on a subconscious level," he said, moving his hands in his explanatory way. "Like we're all leaves on the same tree. It forms the template of human nature, giving us all the same root basics and instincts. Memories and experiences are sort of...downloaded into it, and some think it's how people are born with natural talents or phobias. Now...guys like you and I can't normally access the Collective Unconscious, or use it. But some can."

"Psychics," said Dean. "Real psychics."

Sam nodded. "Mind readers of all kinds. Angels. Demons. But even they have to be in the presence of the mind they're trying to read, or have a strong telepathic link with them."

There was a brief silence, broken by the low ticking of the grandfather clock.

"Soooo...this Collective Unconscious is a place somewhere and we're smack-dab in the middle?"

Sam winced. "Guess I forgot to mention...this isn't us."

"What isn't us?"

Sam gestured at himself and his brother. "These aren't our bodies. These are... figments. Consciousness given form. And we're trapped in this...pocket something created _within_ the Collective Unconscious. And we can't see it properly because our bodies are still alive." He waved an arm over yonder. "Out there somewhere."

"So while you were out, you saw the Corvus family and staff wandering around?"

"Yep. They're everywhere. I'm guessing it takes concentration and energy to form on a plane we can see. Kind of like spirits in the real world."

"Then what about the mirror man? Or the things you saw in your nightmare? Those creeps upstairs?"

Sam paused, then shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe manifestations of fears? Ours or theirs."

"And our good friend Agnes? Did she say what her deal was?"

"Didn't ask. Every time she shows up she stays a little longer, but she gets tired. I didn't want to waste time asking why, or how, she's here. All I know is that she's looking for something. She doesn't remember what."

"Alright." Dean sighed, rubbing his eyes. He flinched and stopped as it pulled the blistered flesh of his face. "I see two ways we can go with this. We either go back upstairs and try to get into that door with the flaming symbols all over it, or we can go into the basement, where you said evil is squatting."

"Hmph. Can't really decide which sounds more fun..."

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

"By the way, how did you get out of the west wing?" asked Sam. "Those bars were pretty solid."

Dean shrugged. "The pastor must have touched them, because they crumbled to dust when I got back. I found another staircase in the east wing that led to servant passages inside the walls. Came out through the music room." He paused. "Don't go in there, whatever you do. I think something's moved in."

"I'll take your word for it." Sam breathed in, then exhaled slowly. "We have two hours."

"'Til what?"

Sam nodded to the thirteen-hour clock. "Not sure. But I got a nasty feeling."

"...Tick tock, Clarice."

The brothers were silent for a while, then Dean released a rough sigh.

"Something's down there. I don't want it sneaking up on our asses. I say we gank it and then find out what's in the attic."

Sam nodded wordlessly and stood, patting himself down. He had his knife, flashlight, the fire poker stub his brother had recovered from upstairs and a single salt shaker. Dean had salt as well, but also a gun with no bullets.

"Here." He held the fire poker out. Half of it was gone, dissolved in the blood of Pastor Gregory. But it was still iron. "Take this."

Dean waved it away. "Keep it. Bullets or no bullets, I'm still a better fighter than you."

"Dean, come on—"

But he had already marched on, down the corridor beneath the balcony, lantern guiding the way. Sam scowled, limping after him. He shined the flashlight to the right, into the dining hall. Wine glasses, cutlery and candelabras gleamed back. After a bit of dusting they would be ready for the evening meal.

To the left were the closed doors to the kitchen, pantry and cellar. There were knives in the kitchen they could filch, but the risk of being sliced and diced was too high.

There was, however, a cleaver embedded in the edge of the dining room table, thrown there by the invisible ancestral spirit of Gordon Ramsay.

"Better than nothing." Dean rocked the cleaver back and forth to ease it free, then hefted it, catching a glimpse of his reflection and sending a fairy of light flitting across the wall.

He froze, glanced behind him, then at the cleaver again, tilting it until he could see his reflection once more.

"...Dean?"

The older brother blinked once, twice. "Thought I saw..." He shook his head. "Never mind."

Sam watched him with concern but said nothing, following him to the cellar door. Its knob was at chest height, indicating stairs beyond. They weren't even sure if it was a cellar below, their floor map having nothing in the space.

It took them several seconds to realize they were just standing there, staring. They turned to each other, then decided who would go first in the usual fashion.

"Always the scissors, Dean."

Dean grumbled and mocked but he went first, tucking the cleaver into his waistband and holding the lantern up to inspect the door closer. No weird sigils, no apparent booby traps. He grabbed the oblong knob, which felt pitted and rough, and turned it.

As though the mechanism was packed with sand or grit, it turned stiffly, and Dean wished, briefly, that it would jam. But as it stopped turning, and he gave it a tug, the door jerked open. Dust and flakes of paint drifted down around the frame. Dean pulled the door the rest of the way open, then threw up an arm, covering his nose in disgust.

"Ugh." Sam pulled the collar of his shirt up, gagging. "That's nasty."

It reeked of rotting vegetation and still water, the stench thick enough to chew. The brothers waited, eyes watering, until the smell became almost tolerable. And then Dean led the way down the steps.

They were of wood, and they creaked and rocked and bowed as the Winchesters descended. The board walls were close on either side, the ceiling barely high enough to not scrape their foreheads. At the first landing, wood became stone. The staircase turned ninety degrees, continuing into darkness. The stench thickened. Expecting cold, they were surprised when the temperature rose and grew muggy. It made the stench that much worse.

"Welcome to hell's outhouse, Sammy," said Dean, trying not to gag.

But then he noticed something on the walls. At first he thought they were tree roots. As he brought the lantern nearer, he saw they were deep, dark red, glistened wetly, and—he peered closer—they were _pulsing._

Dean turned, raising the light, and saw that the living roots were all around them.

"What is this stuff?" Sam poked one. It recoiled on itself. He poked it again.

"Why are you touching it?" Dean hissed.

Looking sheepish, Sam stopped, wiping his hand on his jeans. "Just seeing what it would do."

Dean shook his head and kept going, more cautious this time, ducking to avoid brushing against the hanging roots. But then his shoes squelched, and he knew he had no choice but to touch them too.

"Gross."

They squirmed and popped underfoot, releasing putrid, dark goop. On the walls, they thickened and grew closer together. Dean couldn't help but think them as the blood vessels of the stone walls, of the house itself. So he came to not mind when they broke under his shoes. It was almost like he was killing it.

Then, finally, they reached the floor. The veins were as thick as their wrists now, some covered with pustules or stray, wriggling capillaries. The stench of decaying vegetation reached a high, and if the boys had eaten recently, it all would have come up by now.

"Considering how many times we've been punched in the nose, by all rights we shouldn't be smelling anything," said Sam, gagging again. Even with his collar pulled halfway up his face, he had to blink away tears.

"Any idea what could be causing this?" asked Dean.

Sam shrugged. "Never seen anything like it. Keep looking."

Dean went one way and Sam another, following a wall. Within a few feet Sam came to a corner, where a large, pulsating vein trailed up to the ceiling. It was as thick as his thigh, with several smaller tendrils growing out of it. He stepped over it, careful not to slip.

 _It_ was in the last corner, the one furthest from the stairs. The pit. Four by four feet, it was made smaller by the fat veins growing up the sides and creeping along the floor of the cellar.

Dean met Sam there, coming to the same conclusion. Whatever they were after, it was down in that pit.

"Rematch for rock paper scissors?" said Dean, his smile more like a grimace.

Sam leaned over the abyss, pointing the flashlight down. The roots glistened back. No bottom could be seen. The void reminded him of something.

"In the basement's basement, terrors creep. Meet not his eye for your mind to keep."

Dean looked to him. "What?"

"Something Agnes Corvus told me while I was unconscious. I think that whatever drove Edward insane in the sun room..." He pointed into the pit. "It's down there."

Dean stared into the abyss. "Awesome."

"No one's going down there until we find out how deep it is." Sam looked around for something to drop into it, but there was nothing. Nothing that they didn't mind sacrificing, anyway.

"If Garth ever asks a favour of us again, I'll string him up with his sock puppets," Dean grumbled.

"We'll make a torch. That should take the fall." Sam returned to the stairs. "Coming?"

Dean stared at the pit. "...No. I better stay here and make sure nothing crawls out of there without a fight." He drew the meat cleaver from his waistband, brow creased.

"You sure?"

"Just be quick."

Sam hesitated, then limped up the stairs as fast as his leg would allow. Quick he would be.

Dean still had the lantern, but without Sammy's flashlight, the surrounding darkness seemed tangible. He shifted. Black veins burst underfoot. He thought he heard a sound from the pit, but it could have been Sam, moving around upstairs.

"Hurry, little bro."

* * *

First, Sam broke the leg off of a chair in the dining hall. Then he made a rope of cloth napkins, soaked it in rancid cooking oil from the pantry, and wrapped it around the end of the leg. He tied it in place with curtain cord, which would last long enough for their purpose.

He was about to head back to the cellar when he paused. They had no idea what they were going up against. They had a bit of salt and iron, which would repel ghosts and demons, but if there was something that was neither, their chances dwindled into single digits. Perhaps...

Sam returned to the table, looking at the cutlery. Dusty and tarnished, he had no doubt they were silver. He filled his pockets with forks and knives before hastening into the foyer to check the grandfather clock. Just after eleven.

Although he loathed to return to the cellar and its putrid stench, Sam knew he had little choice. Besides, he would feel much better with the thing downstairs dead and out of the way, or at the very least, located and identified.

Torch unlit but at the ready, he took a last deep breath of semi-fresh air before beginning the journey back to the cellar.

The stairs creaked and squealed so he didn't bother announcing his presence. But he expected a snarky comment from the depths. It didn't come. Sam swallowed dryly.

"Dean?"

"Here, Sam."

The younger brother trotted down the rest of the stairs, nearly tripping over the veins in his haste. At their foot, he stopped.

Dean was standing before the pit, his back to Sam, lantern low at his side. His head was slightly bowed, and his left hand was up, touching his face.

"Dean."

"It...it took my eyes, Sam."

He blanched. Started forward. "...What?"

"My eyes. It took my eyes." Dean turned, and Sam stopped cold.

"Oh my God."

Dean's eyes were gone, eyelids flat and bruised black, red tears running down his cheeks, dripping off his chin. He reached out, staggering towards his brother.

"I can't see, Sammy. Help me."

Before he could move, Sam heard a sound. Soft, wet, like feet through mud. He dropped the torch and drew his knife, turning this way and that, searching the shadows with wide eyes.

"I can hear it." Dean searched with one arm, feeling the open space before him blindly. "Please, Sam. Where are you?"

Sam took his wrist, trying not to be sick at his brother's mutilation. "I'm here. This way, Dean."

"I'm sorry, Sammy. I let it get the jump on me."

"Shush." He pulled Dean behind him. "The stairs are there."

"I'm not leaving without—"

"Go, Dean!"

There was that sound again. Sam checked the corners, high and low, the beam of his flashlight repeatedly returning to the pit. The dark roots stirred, agitated by the light. Pustules popped and lesions wept. Nothing in the room held still.

"This was a bad idea."

"Sam." Dean's voice cracked a little. "It's still here."

Suddenly, the beam of the flashlight caught something different, something in the far upper corner. Sam held the light there, trying to distinguish between it and the wall. Then it moved, and he flinched.

It was lean and wiry, and looked to be made of the same veins that covered the walls. Protrusions out of its back held it in the upper corner, like a giant, grotesque spider. Its stomach looked to be a gaping hole, a mouth, filled with needle teeth. It had four arms, two held at its side, with long fingers that ended in sharp points. Its other two hands were covering its face. It had just started to lower them when Sam whipped the light away.

"No!"

He couldn't look at its face! If he did he would lose his mind, just as Edward did in the sun room.

"What is it, Sam?"

"Run!"

Dean grabbed his jacket and tried to pull him along, but something – a root – had gripped Sam's ankle and he stumbled, knocking them both over. He dropped the knife but clung to the flashlight, which cast light on the torch he had made. He made to turn and lunge for it, but another root wrapped around his wrist, stopping him mid-roll.

"Go, man! Get out of here!" Knife. Where was his knife?!

Dean was ignoring him. He had gotten up and was staggering away from the stairs, lantern held in an iron grip.

"Stop! Dean, you're going right at it!" Sam struggled against his restraints. Then, struck with a tardy brainwave, his hand dove into his pockets and yanked out three silver forks before finally finding a knife. Two slashes and his wrist was free. Three more and so was his ankle. He snatched the flashlight and scrambled to his feet, hastening for Dean. He was on his hands and knees near the pit, probably searching for the cleaver.

"Leave it!" He grabbed his brother's shoulders, trying to pull him along. He could hear the thing, somewhere in the dark, making sloppy, croaking sounds. Sam's nerves were on fire, the urge to run peaking. "Get up!"

"I can't!" Dean tried to rise, but the roots were growing up around his arms, keeping his hands on the floor. "Sonovabitch!" He jerked and twisted and snarled, but he was not strong enough. Sam began to hack through the roots, careful not to cut him, but he knew any second, the thing in the corner could attack. He needed to buy time.

Sam turned and dove for the torch. He yanked it away from the roots that tried to wrap it up and fumbled for the matchbox in his jacket. More silverware tumbled out, tinkling to the ground. The roots recoiled around them, smouldering. Sam lit a match and set it to the oily torch, which took with a fiery _whumph!_

The thing had moved from its corner, its back feelers carrying it closer to the stairs. But it squealed and covered its face at the sudden heat and light. Sam charged it and jammed the torch into its mouth-gut. It screamed louder, using its extra arms to bat at the flames.

Sam whirled around and cut Dean loose of the roots. Their severed ends thrashed, spraying hot slime everywhere.

"What's happening?"

"Tell you later." Sam hauled Dean to his feet, guiding him back to the stairs. The flames were spreading, the monster was squealing, and they had seconds to escape.

It was still screaming when the brothers made it out of the cellar, the staircase glowing like the passage to hell as they slammed the door shut. Arm around his brother's shoulders, Sam led Dean back to the foyer, back to safety.

* * *

Dean was silent as Sam sat him on the stairs, the grandfather clock a few feet in front of them. No snide remarks, no sarcasm or teasing. He couldn't bring himself to speak in such a way after what happened. He was careless, had allowed a monster to get close to him and rob him of his most precious sense. He didn't even see it coming.

And then to stand there alone, feeling the light in his hand but unable to see it, was almost unbearable. He'd captured enough composure to last when Sam returned, but he could feel the last dregs of it threaten to burn out and expose raw emotions.

"Dean."

Sam was sitting next to him. What he wouldn't give to see that mug of his again.

"Yeah?"

"...Does it hurt?"

It felt like he had embers sitting where his eyeballs used to be. He shrugged. "Stings a little."

"Here. Let me see."

Dean felt Sam's fingers on his chin and obediently turned his head towards him. The skin around his eyes was gently pushed, and he tolerated the poking and prodding until Sam touched his eyelid. He flinched away.

" _Don't_."

"Alright, alright, take it easy."

Angered at his misfortune and embarrassed by his reaction, Dean shuffled away a few inches. The house seemed noisier now. Moans and creaks other ambient sounds more noticeable. He knew it was his body compensating for its missing sense.

"Do you think we killed it?"

"Killed what?" asked Dean gruffly.

"That...thing in the cellar."

"Do we even know what it was?"

Sam let out a breath. "Not sure."

"What did it look like?"

Sam described it, and Dean agreed.

"You figure it was that thing that made old Edward lose his marbles in the sun room?"

"I didn't get the best look at it then, but yes. And whatever it is, it doesn't seem to like the touch of silver. If something doesn't like silver, usually it's related to shape—"

"Shape-shifters," Dean chorused. "Yeah... At the very least, we slowed it down. And pissed it off."

There was a click from the grandfather clock, and it began to chime. Dean's guts clenched as it marked the quarter hour. Eleven fifteen. Less than two hours left.

"If we do get back...you think I'll be able to see again?"

Sam was quiet for far too long. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so. This is just your consciousness. How can a consciousness get hurt?"

If he could see his face, Dean might have believed him. He sounded optimistic and certain. But, with his heightened hearing, he could detect the dread and pain in Sam's voice. He had no idea how Dean would emerge from this.

Despite the looming deadline, the brothers continued to sit, mulling, brooding, and suffering.

"I have to go back down there."

Dean turned to him. "No."

"Dean—"

"You're not going back, Sam."

"I have to!"

" _Why?_ "

"Because there's something there we need! I can feel it. Agnes said—"

"Agnes said nothing about Evil Groot!"

"But she did say it had something to do with what's going on in this house. Whatever it is, I bet we have to destroy it in order to get out of here. It isn't enough to just figure out what happened to the Corvuses."

Dean opened his mouth again, but then he felt something by his ruined eyes and he flinched, throwing up a forearm. "I said don't!"

"I'm not touching you, Dean."

The older brother paused, then gently touched his own face, feeling around. He could have sworn he felt...

"What's wrong?"

"...Nothing. Muscle twitch."

He heard Sam get up, and lunged, grabbing fistfuls of his jacket. "Don't go."

"Dean—"

"No, Sam! If that thing's still down there—"

"Then I know how to fight it off!"

Dean's fingers were pried loose, and he was left flailing, trying to regain his balance. Firm hands pushed him back on the stairs.

"Sam, _please._ "

A pause, then the sound of iron on wood. He had left the fire poker on the step. "You're safe here. Won't be a moment."

"Sam? _Sam?_ "

There were only receding footsteps, then nothing. Dean was alone.


	19. Reunion

**No, the veins were not inspired from Stranger Things. Watched that months after these chapters were posted. Just wanted to say that, for some damn reason.**

* * *

 **11:19**

* * *

~19~ Reunion

Nerves afire and heart thundering against his ribs, Sam nevertheless returned to the cellar door alone. He opened it a crack, expecting a putrid stench to waft over him. He smelled nothing but burnt leaves. He opened the door further and clicked off the flashlight, but there was no yellow glow from below. The fire had burned itself out, and, hopefully, everything that had been down there.

Clicking the flashlight on again, Sam crept down the stairs, ears straining. On the stone landing, he traced the light along the walls. Here, at least, the dark roots that had previously swarmed every surface were nothing but ash on the steps. It puffed up around his feet as he continued down.

At the foot of the stairs, he ran the beam of light several times around the cellar. Nothing was left on the walls. If that monster was still alive, it was gone now.

"But gone where?"

He kicked through the ash dunes. He found his knife, Dean's cleaver and a few silver forks. Then there was only one place left to look.

The pit.

The four by four-foot void was as uninviting now as it was when roots were growing out of it. Sam moved to the edge and aimed the light into the depths. He was surprised to see the surface of water just a few feet down.

"Bath time. Great."

He kicked off his shoes and pulled off his socks and jacket. Then, as an afterthought, he removed his shirt and jeans as well. They weren't going to protect him and, if there was something down there, he didn't want to give it much to snag onto.

He also left the cleaver and his blade, taking only a silver dinner knife, which he held between his teeth as he sat on the edge of the square shaft. He half turned and lowered himself into the water. He shivered, breath hitching.

Before letting go, Sam set the flashlight on the mound of clothes, close to the edge and tilted down so that its beam shone across the opening, just below the opposite edge. If the water was clear, hopefully the light would give him some sort of gauging point.

Finally, Sam lowered himself the rest of the way down and released the side. He trod water for a few moments, letting his body get used to the cold. Then he took a deep breath and used the stone walls on either side to push himself down, the water closing over his head.

* * *

Blind and alone, Dean might as well have been in the middle of the woods. He remained sitting on the stairs of the foyer, not wanting his sounds to mask those of anything that might try to stalk him. He wished his heart would pipe down and the clock stop reminding him of what little time they had left.

After a few minutes he pulled out the tinderbox from inside his jacket. Having found it in the master bedroom, he still hadn't figured out how to open it. It was old, corroded and etched with Cherokee characters, which he could feel as he ran his fingers over it.

"What are you hiding from us?"

He shook it, heard something rattle inside. Along with the fire poker, Sam had left a silver dinner knife on the step, and Dean used it to try and pry the box open fruitlessly. Releasing a rough sigh, Dean wondered if smashing it with something heavy enough times would get him somewhere.

Then he heard a sound, and stiffened. It was different, out of beat with the ambience of the house. Dean set the tinderbox down and held the knife in his right hand. He itched to draw his revolver, but even if he had his eyes he wouldn't be able to use it. No bullets.

Footsteps. They were definitely footsteps. He turned his head this way and that, zeroing in on the sounds. They were coming from the library, east of the foyer.

He remembered the salt shaker in his pocket and grabbed that as well, keeping in mind the fire poker beside him. Although this was some kind of pocket within the Collective Unconscious, the ghost of Ariel Corvus had reacted to iron. Spirits were vulnerable to such things here.

The footsteps neared. They were sluggish and slow, dragging across the floorboards as though they bore a great weight.

There was no hiding. So Dean mustered up his most macho voice.

"Hey, dead-weight. Pick up your feet, for God's sake."

The dragging footsteps stopped, then resumed, faster. Dean went taut, preparing to throw salt.

"The hell are you?"

Dean recoiled slightly. He knew that voice. Young, spiced with Mexican and a bit haughty. He'd only heard it once, but it was recent and had left a deep impression.

"George Firandez," said Dean.

"Yeah, that's me...Bloody Jesus, did they get you too?"

Dean stood. Wobbly, he grabbed the banister. "Yeah. Looks like it." How on earth could George be here? Dean had exorcised the ghost from him at the hospital, but how he fared after that, the hunter was in the dark.

"The hell happened to your eyes?"

"You don't want to know. Hey, Georgie. Do me a favour and get over here."

There was a hesitation, then George approached, feet still dragging. "What?"

Dean waited until he could sense the man was but feet away. "Hold out your hand."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

"Who are you?"

"Honestly? The guy trying to save you. And your friends."

"You've seen Tyson and Dave? Where? Tell me!"

Dean braced himself. "Take it easy, man. I'm still trying to figure this out too."

George reined in his anger. The man before him looked to have been through a lot, just like him.

"What's with the loot, anyway? You ready to eat or something?" He nodded at the salt and knife, forgetting the guy couldn't see.

"Silver hurts shape-shifters. Salt repels ghosts. Which reminds me – hold out your hand."

George didn't hold out his hand. "Shape-shifters? Ghosts? The _hell_ , man?"

"Are you seriously going to be like that? I'm assuming you saw a _lot_ of weird crap the past while. Hold. Out. Your hand."

The young man swallowed. "I...can't."

"Why not?"

George looked down at himself, at the thick chains that were wrapped around his body, like a medieval straight jacket. They were etched with weird symbols, and burned him if he so much as thought about trying to break free.

As though sensing the issue, the older man shook his head and came forward, holding up the salt shaker.

"This won't hurt, unless it does."

Before George could retreat, specks of salt were flicked into his face. He blinked and backed a step.

"The hell?"

"Yes, you keep saying that." The man sat down on the steps. "As I mentioned before, salt repels ghosts. I had to make sure you were still alive."

"Do I _look_ fecking dead?"

The guy gave him a look. "I'm Dean, in case you cared."

"I'm George, but somehow you already knew that."

"You alone here, George?"

"I don't know what happened to my friends. One moment we were..." He swallowed. "I remember hearing music, like from a music box, you know? Then suddenly, some crazy dude with an axe attacked me. Everything went dark, and when I woke up, I was like...this."

"Like what, George?"

"...Chained. I can't get them off."

Dean frowned. George could tell he was thinking. Puzzling. Not freaking out.

"Look, there are some real psychos in his place, man. We gotta get out of here."

"I assume you've tried all the windows and doors?" said Dean blandly.

"...One of them has to open! How the hell did we get in here if not through a door?"

"Are you a religious man, George?"

"I believe. But I doubt prayers will do me much good. Haven't so far."

"They never do anyone good. Look. I don't have time to give you the full talk but I'll try to enlighten you. First, tell me everything you remember when the gh— when the man with the axe attacked you. Did you feel...separate from your body?"

"Yeah. Yeah, a bit. It got really cold, and then suddenly...it was almost like I was seeing the world from another's eyes. Then it went black."

Dean nodded as though confirming his own assumptions.

"Dude...what's going on? How can you be so calm?"

"George, I need you to tell me how different this area is from when you first saw it. Tell me of anything unusual."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

"...Well..." George turned, careful not to fall over in his restraints. "This is going to sound really weird, but...I can see through the walls, sometimes."

"Like are they...flickering?"

"Yeah. Man, I'm _really_ trippin' balls, man."

"Alright, George, calm down. What else do you see?"

"Think I see...people, sometimes. Wearing old clothes. They're just wandering around."

"And the clock?"

George turned around. "It's broken."

"Broken how?"

"The hands and numbers are gone. Doesn't tick anymore."

"And what were you doing before you blacked out?"

"Looking for a way out. This is going to sound crazy, but—"

"Trust me, buddy. I can handle crazy."

George looked hard at Dean's face and believed him completely.

"There were...clues someone left lying around. I think this is someone's kink – kidnapping people and teasing them with the means to escape. Like Saw, you know? They're probably watching us right now."

Dean huffed. "If only it were that simple."

"Then what do _you_ think it is, Rambo?"

Now Dean released a breath. He never liked doing this. "You're right about someone trapping people in this place. But you're wrong in that it's a thing, not a person."

"Oh, really?"

"Really really. That bloke with the axe? He's a spirit, died here over a hundred years ago, and for a few days, he enjoyed freedom in your body."

"...You're crazy, too, man—"

"I wish I was. I've been attacked as well. And I didn't understand what had really been happening until you came." The more Dean spoke of it, the more certain he was. The floating Grudge-broad in the parlour, Ariel Corvus the barber in the master bedroom—they were trying to use him, his consciousness, as a conduit to get to his body, which was out in the world somewhere. It was a way out, and the ghosts were far too old and dark to care who they hurt to get that freedom.

And now George was seeing the manor differently than him and Sam. Why? Perhaps because he and his two amigos had run out of time.

"What have you been doing since you woke up, George?"

Dean could almost hear the shrug.

"Wandering. I can't seem to do anything. Every time I try to open a door, I seem to magically appear somewhere else. I can't find my friends and I can't get these damn chains off."

"And yet you're still calling me crazy."

"I'm high! I must be."

"No. You're stuck here. Just like all the other dead sods you've been seeing."

"Stuck?"

"Yep." Dean reached into his jacket and pulled out the tinderbox again. There was no more time for chit chat. "Ever see this?"

"How the hell did you get that? Tyson had it."

"Found it in the master bedroom. In a locked writing desk. The key was in—"

"The library." George sounded confused. "But I had the key. I never put it back."

"Hmph." Dean turned the tin box over and over in his hands. It would seem that, once time had run out for George and friends, everything they had touched – the clues, the keys – had been reset. Like a board game.

"Ever open it?"

George scoffed. "Yeah. Dave's mom is pure Cherokee. Or at least she says she is. Knew the old alphabet and taught him a thing or two."

"What does it say?" said Dean, trying not to feel excited.

"Something...something like, uh..." He frowned in thought.

"You have to remember."

"What for? All that was in it was a green candle. Plenty of candles around here that work just fine."

"George!" Dean curbed his anger. "I just need you to do this for me. You and your friends failed. Me and Sam have to succeed or we'll end up like you."

"Who's Sam?"

"My brother. He's downstairs right now and he's taking way too long to get back."

"Oooh, you guys went downstairs? Man, we didn't even try. Stank worse than my pappy's gym socks."

"Wonderful. Now. Can you remember—"

"Shut up and let me try."

Dean waited in silent darkness for several tense moments. And then George said, "What made the Raven black, the Snake as soot, and cradled in the Spider's bowl?"

"...What the f—?"

"It's a riddle. Dave said it's from an old Indian myth. The answer is fire...The First Fire."

"The First Fire." Dean froze as he felt a sort of ripple go through the tinderbox. "That's it."

"It is?"

Dean opened it, feeling around inside.

"It was the last thing he said, I think. Dave, I mean. But like I said, just a candle. Probably the same damn one, too."

Dean felt the hard wax cylinder and the wick at the end. "Is it green?"

"Yeah."

Dean put the box down and felt his pockets. "Dammit. Sammy's got the matches."

"...'Kay, even if you could see, man, you've got a lantern right there."

Dean ignored him and stood, putting the box, candle, silver knife and salt in his pockets. Grabbing up the fire poker and lantern, he felt his way around the banister, towards the passage that led towards the dining hall and kitchen. "Coming?"

"Coming where?"

"I have to get to my brother."

George took a step, but a feeling came over him, and he knew, somehow, he couldn't. "Sorry, man. Can't help you."

Dean looked—no, _turned_ back towards him, and seemed to understand. "Alright. Thanks for the help."

"Yeah. Hey, Dean. Good luck with your brother. And...keep an eye out for my friends, okay?"

The strange blind man nodded. "We'll get you all out of this...I promise."

Then George faded, not that Dean could see it. But he sensed the feeling of solitude return. He turned away from the foyer, feeling his way back to the cellar. Back to Sam.


	20. Depths

**11:26**

* * *

~20~ Depths

Sam surfaced for the tenth time, gasping raggedly. Again and again he had sunk down as far as he could, feeling the walls, every brick and flaw, trying to find whatever it was the house wanted him to find. His body never fully numbed to the cold and he was getting slower, unable to go as deep. He kept tying and retying the cloth napkins on his chest and leg, which had softened and stretched in the water. The wounds kept cracking and bleeding. And he had since secured the knife to his waist with his belt to keep his mouth and hands free, but it irritated his bare skin and he had to constantly check to make sure it wouldn't fall out.

He clung to the edge, regaining his breath. Maybe he should get dressed and thaw himself piece by piece by Dean's lantern. Then he would try again. And again and again until he cracked this puzzle.

But then he stiffened at the creak of ancient wood. Someone was coming down the stairs.

Sam thought about turning the light off, but immediately discarded the idea. A ghost or monster would find him light or no light, so he might as well help himself a bit.

"Sam?"

And all the dread drained away, replaced with relief, then annoyance.

"What are you doing, Dean?"

"Man, it's so good to hear your voice." Dean appeared on the landing, feeling his way down.

"I've only been gone a few minutes."

"An eternity without your warmth, my love."

"Say that again and I'll kick your ass."

Dean grinned, carefully setting his foot on each step until he reached the bottom. "You're not going to believe what just happened."

"Later, Dean. I've gotta—"

"Hey. Are you in water?"

"...Yeah."

"You're not in the pit, are you?"

"We burned the roots and now the pit's full of water. I think that's a hint."

"What the _hell_ , man!"

"Don't try and stop me, Dean. It's getting old."

"Sam. Sam, wait—"

Sam had already submerged again, determined to find the next clue before he surfaced. But, as with every other time, he simply could not feel anything and he was forced to go up for air.

"Dammit, Sam! Just listen for a moment!"

Sam spat and ran a hand over his head, getting hair out of his face. "What?"

Dean held up a candle, looking pleased with himself. Sam stared, unimpressed, until he noticed its strange colour.

"Is that a—?"

"Yep. A witchlight. Light this sucker and it'll glow forever. Even underwater."

"Where'd you get it?" Sam kicked further out of the water and got his elbows on the edge, pawing his jacket for the matches.

"The tinderbox. Tell you later." Dean knelt, but kept the witchlight candle just out of reach. "Now I don't think I need to tell you—"

"Dean, you can't see. And I've been down there a dozen times – no monsters. It's safe. But it's friggin' cold so if you keep prolonging this I will lock you in the parlour."

Dean sucked his teeth. "You'd never do that to your adorable big brother."

"Give me the damn candle."

Dean grinned and tried to pass it to him, but he was off course by several inches. Sam moved to meet him, snatching the green candle before it could be lifted out of reach again. When he lit it with a match – leaving them with three – a playful emerald flame danced on the wick. It took a measure of willpower to dip it in the water, but true to the stories, the flame did not go out.

"Huh. It works!"

"Nice," said Dean.

"But I'll need both hands to get anywhere fast..." Sam lifted it out of the water, and let it go. The candle floated there, near his head. Magic was so handy when it wasn't being used to hurt them.

"'Kay," said Sam. "I'll be right back."

He descended as he had several times before. But now he had a chance; the witchlight remained near his ear, lighting the walls around him.

He searched methodically, pushing himself down as far as he could facing one wall, the green glow illuminating every brick. He ascended before he was out of breath, turned ninety degrees, and went down again. When he found nothing at that level, he went deeper, moving faster but not so fast as to exhaust himself. He paid attention to the water, if it seemed to be moving or changing temperature, which could indicate the proximity of its source. Some kind of underwater flow might sweep him out of the shaft and away to oblivion. He probably wouldn't drown. He'd just float there in the dark, unable to die.

 _Don't think like that, Winchester_ , Sam chided himself, ascending once more. He barely had enough air to make it to the surface, and he gasped raggedly.

"Sam?"

"'M alright." Sam spat, then trod water, regaining his breath.

"Maybe you should stop."

"No. I don't want to lose my spot."

Dean said nothing more, and Sam took it as his cue to continue. This time, though, instead of propelling himself down feet first, he tucked and rolled. Like a crazy parrot, the witchlight remained near his head, now slightly below him so it still lit the way. Sam kicked hard, desperate to get lower than he had before, to find whatever it was he needed to find.

He was more than halfway through his breath, which was big-time red zone on the dumbass-meter, when he finally found it.

It was as brick just like every other brick, but it was sticking out from the wall over an inch. Righting himself, Sam grabbed it and wiggled it like a loose tooth. It did not come out.

He pulled the knife from his belt and drew it around the sides, scraping off tiny chunks of mortar. His chest began to seize and cramp, and he knew his time was up. But for once, fate took pity on him and released the brick. He almost dropped it, gripping it and hugging it to his chest as his stomach roiled with panic. If he dropped it, that was it. Game over.

How he made it back to the surface without passing out was another token of mercy. His head broke the surface, spraying water everywhere and inhaling greedily. His hair covered his eyes.

"Dean! I found something."

"Finally! Come on, get..." Dean trailed off.

"What?" Sam brushed hair out of his face and looked up. "What's...? Crap."

Dean was leaning over the edge of the well, blindly feeling the bars that had appeared across the opening.

"Not again."

"I'll get you out of there, Sammy. Just don't panic."

Sam rolled his eyes and grabbed a bar, pulling himself up one-handed and pushing the brick through. "Incoming."

Dean got a good grip on it and set it aside. He felt the bars again. "You seeing something I can't feel? Weak points?"

Sam gave the bars an experimental tug. "They're all the same thickness."

"Any bolts?"

"Nope."

"Can't suck in that chest and squeeze through, eh?"

Sam guessed there were about six inches between the bars. "No, don't think so."

"Hmph."

Dean was trying not to freak out, he could see. He looked stern and thoughtful, but the fear was there.

"Maybe if you put the brick back, the bars will disappear again."

"That doesn't solve our problem."

"But at least you'll be out."

Sam huffed. His breath rattled with the cold. "Maybe I can put something there other than the brick."

"...The tinderbox?"

"Worth a shot."

Dean pulled it out of his jacket and passed it through the grate. "Check to make sure there's nothing else important on it."

Sam checked the box over, but other than the cryptic writing on the outside, there was nothing of interest. He filled it with water to avoid having to fight air, and gave a nod to Dean before remembering his condition. "Won't be a moment."

He dove as before, headfirst, the witchlight guiding the way. He realized then that he couldn't remember which side the brick had come from, and hoped the gap would become noticeable as he descended.

Several feet above, Dean waited in anguish. Every second felt like an eternity, every heartbeat torture. He could breathe. Sam could not. If only he could see. If only that damned monster hadn't plucked out his—

He felt it again. Like something moving under the flesh in his eye sockets. Before, he shook it off as spasms, muscles trying to move the organs no longer there. But it definitely felt like something else was squirming around in there.

His guts churned. What if what had happened to Sam in the sun room was happening to Dean now? Would worms come wriggling out of his eye sockets, giving him hallucinations and driving him bonkers?

 _Nah. The curse wouldn't do something so similar twice. That's boring._

For some reason the thought was a comfort, and he focused on holding vigil. Every few seconds he reached out in the hope of feeling nothing. And every few seconds the hope was dashed. He had no idea if that was because their plan didn't work or if Sam hadn't set the tinderbox yet. So instead of fretting for himself, he fretted for his baby brother.

It seemed an age before he reached out and grasped nothing but air. He felt along the edge of the pit before allowing himself to feel any elation.

"Yes!"

Now Sam needed only to make it back up, and they could continue.

He heard bubbles burble to the surface, and seconds later, a splash and gasp.

"Did it work?" said Sam.

"Look for yourself, bright eyes."

Sam spat, and Dean imagined him pushing that thrice-damned hair out of his face. He heard the relief in his sigh.

"Good thinking."

"You, too." Dean reached down and Sam clasped forearms with him. When he felt Sam yank on his arm, pulling him down towards the water, his other shot out and braced against the opposite edge of the pit, stopping himself.

"Dude!" Was this a joke? Then he felt a mighty jerk again, which twisted his upper body and pulled him towards the water. Pain shrieked up his spine and across his shoulders. What was Sam _doing?_

"Quit it, man!"

Locking his body, Dean tugged with all his might, Sam's nails digging into his flesh. He wasn't pulling Dean. Something was pulling Sam.

His grip slipped off his brother's bare forearm, but caught again at his wrist, and he tightened it until he knew he must be hurting Sam. But there was no choice.

"Hold on. I got you, buddy."

If he didn't know better, Dean would have thought he was lifting his bigger brother one-handed up over open space, not from water. The strain tore across his chest, burning his arms and back of his thighs, and his lip curled with the effort. Air hissed through his teeth. His cheeks flushed. Neck tendons bulged. But whatever had grabbed hold of Sam was not letting up.

Dean stopped hearing bubbles breaking the surface. He felt Sam's wrist go slack.

"No!"

* * *

As soon as he was pulled beneath the surface, Sam kicked at the spectre that gripped his other arm even though the space was limited and his foot went through it anyway. He caught glimpses of it in the green glow of the witchlight – an older boy, bloated, white-eyed, wearing filthy riding clothes. A drowned spirit.

Its hand was icy on Sam's wrist, and if not for Dean, he would have been hauled to the depths of the shaft. But he was running out of air, fast, and his grip on his brother's forearm slipped. Dean's hand clamped around his wrist in the nick of time.

 _Iron, Dean!_ he cried inwardly. _Drop the fire poker!_

He could feel him trying to haul him up, but the ghost was easily keeping Sam in place. Pain flared through his shoulders, feeling like his arms would pop out of their sockets. He struggled against the ghost boy uselessly, panic taking hold and encouraging him to open his mouth in the vain hope that there was air.

Sam looked up. He could see the surface, disturbed by the struggle, small waves bouncing off the walls of the shaft and cutting across each other. But then he saw something else. A face that did not belong to Dean. It was cold and lined with determined concentration, hovering just above the surface. Its eyes were a startling blue and it bristled with a beard.

Then Sam became aware of large hands on his shoulders, keeping him down. He no longer felt Dean's hold, nor the ghost boy's. It was just him and the one drowning him, who could have been the spirit's father, they looked so similar. Perhaps he was.

 _It is_ , he thought. _It is! Papa, stop!_

He wasn't Sam anymore. He was the boy, and he didn't know why his father was doing this to him. He knew his mental health had been failing of late, ever since he came back from the work camp, but why had he tricked his only son into the pond just to kill him? Why? Why? Why?

The light faded. His struggles ceased. He felt disconnected from his body as it was released and allowed to float away in the pond. They would find him the next day and have no reason to believe he'd been murdered.

To the boy, it had seemed like half a lifetime. In reality, it was only a few seconds, and so Sam still had life in him when Dean hauled him out of the water. The feeling of air on his face quickly roused him from the brink of unconsciousness and he spat before gasping raggedly, clawing his way out of the shaft, not caring as ash plastered itself to his body.

"Hey, hey! Are you alright?"

Dean grabbed Sam's face and blindly felt around his arms and chest, searching for injury. Sam pushed him away.

"Knock it off, Dean. I'm fine." Sam regained his breath, then stood, wiping off as much ash as he could before pulling on his clothes. His wounds stung and his shoulders burned.

Dean waited impatiently, heart still hammering. "What the hell happened?"

"Later. Let's get out of this damn hole."


	21. Garble

**11:33**

* * *

~21~ Garble

Leaving the cellar for the second time, the brothers took refuge in the foyer, where they took turns updating the other on their discoveries.

"It makes sense," said Sam after Dean had finished recounting his conversation with George Firandez. "The spirit that hijacked George's body was already mad, which is why he acted so erratically when he was found. But you said you evicted the spirit."

"Yeah. A bit of iron and it was kicked out. But by then there was a swarm of nurses and I had to get out. I assumed he was still alive..."

"Kind of worries me," Sam mumbled. "If his body is in the hospital and still appears alive, even with his consciousness trapped here, they'll take care of him, and that's great. But we passed out at the front gate of the grounds."

A muscle jumped in Dean's jaw. "Which means anything could happen to us out there...Unless Garth found us."

"I hope he did. I'd rather not get back to a body eaten by crows."

"So what did you see?" asked Dean. "What grabbed you in the water?"

Sam shook his head. "A kid. He showed me that he was murdered by his own dad. Everyone just assumed he'd drowned in the pond. His dad must have been one of the first to go bonkers."

"So? I mean, yeah, it's sad but it isn't new. We know everyone killed everybody else."

Sam shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe the kid knew something. Or maybe he just needed someone to know the truth."

"Fat lot of good that does him. He's still trapped here until we figure out how to break this damn curse. And nearly drowning you is _not helping!_ " he called to the air.

"But wait, Dean. Remember what happened when I fell down the stairs and blacked out – I saw the house as it truly is: a pocket within the Collective Unconscious. The longer I was like that, the more I could see, such as the ghosts. I think I had to be unconscious again to see what the kid wanted me to see."

"Hey, how can you be unconscious within the Collective Unconscious?"

"Don't ask those questions, Dean. They're annoying." Sam suddenly noticed the witchlight – a green-flamed, floating candle – was still hovering at his shoulder. He grabbed it and stuffed it into his pocket, heedless of the flame. The lantern was more than enough light right now.

Dean scratched around his bruised eye sockets, which still seeped red on occasion. "Alright. So for all that, all we got was a lousy brick." He felt the stairs for it.

"I've got it, man."

"And what made you choose that brick over every other brick?"

Sam turned it over and over in his hand. "It was sticking out from the wall a bit."

"If they wanted you to have it, why would they put it way the hell down there?"

"That's another annoying question, Dean."

"It's probably only good for chucking at the next monster's head."

"Stop scratching your eyes. You're making it worse."

Dean lowered his hand and scowled in the wrong direction. "Yes, _Mom_."

Sam rolled his eyes and kept inspecting the brick. It seemed pretty normal. "Maybe there's something inside." He scratched at it. Red powder caught beneath his nail.

"Well then. Hulk, smash."

Sam tried. He threw it down the hall, dropped it from the foyer balcony, and hit it with a marble statuette. Nothing so much as chipped off a corner. And he wasn't about to scratch it to dust.

"This is stupid," he grumbled, returning to Dean.

"No luck?"

"Take a guess." Sam sat heavily beside him, dropping the brick at his feet.

"Hmph... Hear that?"

"...What?"

"Shh." Dean turned and tilted his head, this way and that, reminding Sam of a fox hunting mice in the snow.

"What are you—?"

"Shh!" He threw a hand up, frowning.

Sam listened as hard as he could, but he just couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary. So he was surprised when Dean stood, grasping blindly at the railing as he turned on the steps and began to ascend them.

"Dude."

"Can't you hear it? It's like a...crackling sound." As slow as an old man, Dean felt his way up the stairs. Sam let him be, picking up the brick before following quietly.

It wasn't until they had returned to the stairway leading up to the third floor that he finally detected what Dean did. A crackle, almost like—

"Static." Dean opened the door, and the sound was unobstructed and unmistakable. Sam felt like smacking himself.

"Of course. The portable transceiver."

"The what what?"

Sam stepped around him, finding the device on a step further up the stairway. "It must have fallen out of my jacket when I fell." He picked it up and limped back down.

"What?"

"This." Sam placed it in his hand. "A walkie-talkie."

"You found a walkie-talkie?" He felt it carefully, touching buttons and tuning dial. "Where?"

"Upstairs after we got separated. Completely forgot about it."

"Well what's it doing here? I'm not complaining. I just want to know where the other one is."

Sam shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. All it's done so far is give off static."

"Have you tried speaking through it?"

"What for? Who could possibly be listening? That thing looks like something Dad would have used during his service."

"Try." Dean pushed it back into Sam's hands.

He sighed but tuned it to a random station before pressing the talk button. "Hello?" He released it, and listened. Garble.

"Try another station."

Sam obeyed, testing at least five before admitting defeat. "It must be something we've imagined up. Like my flashlight. They're too young to be in a place like this on their own."

"Hmph. So if I imagined a beer, it'll appear?" Dean paused expectantly. Sam looked around for him.

"No. Nothing."

"Damn."

Sam tucked the device back into his jacket. For whatever reason, its weight, its solidity, was comforting.

"Alright. So what do we have to go on?"

Dean faced the wrong way as he spoke. "Your brick. A witchlight. The door with the weird symbols upstairs. Um..."

"We don't have anymore keys, so we're not unlocking anything." Sam checked his pockets. "We've got three matches. The map of the first floor. A walkie-talkie. Pastor Gregory's crucifix necklace and bible message. Some silverware and a fire poker."

"A cleaver. A gun with no bullets." Dean drew the latter and waved it discontentedly.

"My knife and flashlight."

"Aaand a lantern. We're ready for battle."

Sam sighed softly. Dean could hear the despair he was normally adept at hiding, but didn't know how to lift his spirits. He turned away, thinking furiously.

"We gotta speak to some of these ghosts. Their clues are too vague and far-in-between."

"I bet they're trying," said Sam. "But it's exhausting for them, just like in the real world. We're alive and don't see on the same plane as them."

"I get that. So what if we find a way to...I don't know, summon one?"

"Well unless you got all the ingredients squirrelled away somewhere, I don't think we can do that, Dean."

"I don't hear you coming up with any great ideas," said Dean blandly.

Sam, in actuality, _did_ have an idea. But he didn't like it and he knew his brother wouldn't either. He tucked it away in the back of his mind to suggest later.

"Upstairs," Dean said. "We need to explore the upper east wing."

Sam shifted, and it was as though Dean sensed his unease.

"I never saw that thing you mentioned when I went through there. You probably hurt it more than you thought and it went and croaked somewhere."

Cheeks warm, Sam leaned against the wall. "I'm not a child, Dean. It wasn't that scary."

Dean faced him directly, and the sightless gaze seemed to penetrate Sam's skull. He pushed off the wall and looked away.

"Let's go."

"Wait. Got anything I can tie around my eyes? They're itchy as hell."

Sam wordlessly unwrapped part of the bindings on his leg, tugging free a cloth napkin. He tied the bindings back before spreading the cloth on the floor and rolling it up.

"Turn around."

Dean obeyed, and Sam set the napkin across his eye sockets, tying it behind his head. "There."

The elder brother felt it, then nodded in satisfaction. "Onward and upward."


	22. Gallery

**11:45**

* * *

~22~ Gallery

The rose key was still in the lock at the top of the stairway. Sam led with his flashlight, Dean using the wall as a guide with one hand, other holding the lantern. Although it was of no use to him, he never offered it to Sam and Sam never asked for it.

"We're here."

"Go on then," said Dean with forced impatience.

Sam faced the door, took a deep breath, and unlocked it, pushing it open.

And paused. Gone were the dark, narrow passages and rooms. It was still dark but it looked to be a normal hallway. The walls were pink and the ceiling white, stained with mould yet reminiscing of a warm, homely area.

"Weird."

"What?" Dean followed him through.

"It's all different." Sam described it to him, shining the light from one way to another.

Dean frowned. "Then how are we supposed to get back to that door with all the funky symbols?"

"Dunno. Maybe it's still there." He turned right of the stairs and walked a few feet. But it would seem even the bars that had separated them before were gone. "Which way do you want to go first...? Dean?"

He looked back. Dean was still by the door, turning his head this way and that.

"Feel that? There's a draft coming from that way." He pointed in the opposite direction, to the east wing.

Sam didn't feel it, but he wasn't about to doubt Dean did. "Alright. We'll go that way." He returned to his brother's side, still feeling nothing. So Dean took the lead, using the wall as a guide, heeding Sam's warnings if there were tables or other obstructions.

Nerves afire, Sam was not set at ease by Dean's calm progress. Surely if he could hear static through a door on another floor, he could hear anything coming. But ghosts didn't make noise when they moved. Sam kept the fire poker stub at the ready, looking over his shoulder as often as ahead.

"Doors, Dean."

The elder brother stopped before a double set of doors at the end of the hallway. "It's coming from there."

Sam walked around him and tested a knob. To his surprise, it opened. Hinges squealed, making him cringe as he pushed the door into near darkness.

"Well?" Dean demanded.

Sam stepped through, panning with the flashlight. Marble pillars gleamed back. He went further and saw windows high above in the opposite wall, emitting a hazy grey light through the fog.

"It's some kind of gallery or something."

They were on the first floor of a two levelled, rectangular chamber, the second being a colonnade running along all four walls and overlooking the open, central space. Stairs on the left led to the second level.

Dean tagged along – perhaps a bit too closely – as Sam explored. The orb of light lit up large paintings on every wall between pilasters. The occasional pedestal bore marble or sandstone statuettes, wreathed in cobwebs. When Sam shone the flashlight to the upper gallery, he saw similar artwork there.

"Anything interesting?"

"Nothing. Yet." Sam moved out from under the colonnade, towards the centre of the room. There, a larger pedestal stood empty.

"Hm."

"What?"

"I think there's a statue missing. Some kind of central piece."

"I weep for humanity."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Something led us here. This might be a clue."

"Is there anything written on it?"

Kneeling, Sam began inspecting it when he heard a flapping sound.

"Sam—"

"I hear it." He straightened and shone the light up, just in time to see something dark flying overhead. He trapped it in the light, following it to where it landed on the upper balcony.

"It's a bird."

A crow. It had something in its beak, a small sphere on the end of some string, gleaming in the light. Sam couldn't make out what it was.

"Agnes?"

The crow stared at them, then turned and hopped off the railing, out of sight.

"Hey!" Sam almost forgot about Dean in his haste to pursue the bird girl. He grabbed his wrist and tugged him along, back under the colonnade and to the staircase leading to the second level. There, he slowed, allowing Dean to find his footing impatiently.

"Just go ahead—"

"Fat chance." Sam ensured his brother made it up the last step before turning the flashlight towards where he'd seen the crow last. It was around the next corner.

He rounded it at a jog, Agnes' name dying in his throat. There was nothing but more paintings and stone figures.

Dean walked into him and bounced off. "Dude."

"She's gone." He listened, but heard no flapping. The flashlight picked up nothing in the rest of the gallery.

"It was definitely her, though," said Dean, wrinkling his nose. "She smells like she's two weeks dead, as a crow."

"Assuming it _is_ Agnes."

"You said you saw a crow turn into a girl after you lost consciousness on the stairs."

"I said I saw a crow, _then_ a girl. I was just assuming they're one and the same." Sam kept shining the light around, hoping that he had simply missed the bird in a shadow somewhere. The light caught something else.

It was a clay jar, sitting on the floor a few metres ahead. Sam moved towards it, cautious, leaving his brother standing at the corner.

"Man, that Agnes chick is really starting to piss me off," Dean mumbled, rubbing around the bandage across his eyes.

Sam ignored him, kneeling and picking up the jar. It was small and capped, like a sugar bowl. He plucked the lid off and tilted the jar over his hand.

A mistake. How he had the willpower to not fling the thing aside as soon as it touched his palm would forever remain a mystery.

It was an eyeball. A gleaming, tacky eyeball with raw nerves still attached.

It hadn't been a ball on a string in the crow's beak. It had been this.

 _Eeeeew_. Sam almost dropped it back into the jar when he noticed the colour of the iris. And he was glad he hadn't flung it away.

"Can we go now?" asked Dean. "This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies."

Sam almost spoke. He almost told his brother he had one of his _eyeballs_ in the palm of his hand. Instead, he put it back in the jar, which he capped and slipped into an inside jacket. A time would come.

"Not yet," he said at last, standing and turning in a circle. Maybe Dean's other eye was around? Or Agnes had it. "There must be something interesting..." He stopped, facing the wall. "Hm."

"Now what?"

"This painting. It's crooked."

"For Pete's sake, Sam, this is no time to indulge your OCD."

It was a picture of the manor, with a well-tended garden, bright sky and all-around cheerful demeanour. Unlike most of the other paintings he'd seen, this one wasn't mutilated. He touched the corner, nudging it so that it hung straight on the wall.

And it fell, hard, the thick wooden frame nearly crushing his toes before he jumped back with a yelp. The bang echoed throughout the gallery.

"Dammit, Sam, what was that?"

"It fell off the wall."

"Jesus." Dean had put a hand to his chest. So focused he was on listening for wing beats, the loud noise had jolted his heart.

Sam was about to pick it up – although he didn't know why – when he noticed something written in chalk on the wall where the painting had been.

"Hey, check this out," he said without thinking.

Dean scoffed. "Sure. Just let me pop my eyes back in, here..."

Sheepish, Sam glanced sideways at him, conscious of the jar in his jacket. "There's a message.

" _Find the missing paintings three;  
_ _The steed of Death, the hanging tree,  
_ _The valkyries over hills of blue,  
_ _Together, reveal the way for you._ "

Dean scratched around his bandage again, still feeling the muscles spasms inside his empty eye sockets. "Well that's as straight forward as it gets."

"Yeah..."

"...What?"

"I've seen one of those paintings. Death's horse."

"Great, let's go."

"It's in the parlour."

"...Awesome." Dean sidestepped, arm out, until he touched the banister. "Maybe there's another one in here somewhere."

"Better check. Come on."

"I'm fine here. You just do a quick look."

"Are you sure?"

"Tick tock, Sammy."

There was a hesitation, but then Sam trotted off, footsteps fading. Dean could hear him make the round, barely pausing as he inspected the art. In less than a minute he was back.

"Nope. But there is an empty space with a hook. I guess we gotta bring the paintings back here...Will you knock it off?"

Dean had to force himself to stop rubbing where his eyes used to be. "It's itchy!"

Sam pursed his lips and put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "This way."

At the door to the gallery, he had Dean wait while he jogged the perimeter again. He found where the other two paintings were to be placed, but no gallows tree, no valkyries, no eyeball. They were elsewhere in the house. He returned to the door.

"Alright. On me."

With their limited time remaining, it seemed to take an age to return to the first floor. The fact Dean couldn't move faster than a trot didn't help. But despite the practicality, Sam stubbornly refused to leave him behind again. And he got more and more angry every time Dean suggested it.

Sam dragged him along, across the foyer, through the reception area, to the double doors of the parlour.

"We stick together," Sam snapped. He kicked the doors open with the flat of his foot.

That tangible blackness was still there. The dark that swallowed light. Sam released him.

"Except for right now."

"Sam, don't even think—" He felt the displacement of air beside him and lunged forward, grabbing Sam by the jacket. "I'll hear it coming."

"It's too dangerous."

"You're the one who didn't want to be separated! You change your mind like a girl changes clothes."

"Pot, meet kettle. And don't quote Katy Perry. Creeps me out."

 _And yet you knew the singer and recognized the words_ , Dean thought, smirking to himself. But the look faded as he took two steps forward. Even if he hadn't known Sam guided him to the parlour, he knew he had just stepped into it. It had a darkness no blindness could attain.

His remaining senses shifted into overdrive as he tailed his brother into the void. He was aware of every irregularity in the floor, of the musty smell that wafted up with each step, of the sound of his brother's breathing and his own. That was a comfort. The sound of life.

He heard Sam stop but walked right into him, not realizing how close he was.

"Sorry," he muttered.

"It's here, Dean."

Sam shone the flashlight at the painting – a pale horse cantering through a field despite the black slug of a tongue lolling from its lips and the gash in its side exposing maggot-infested innards.

"Great. Grab it and let's haul ass."

Sam reached up to grasp either side of the artwork, preparing to lift it off the wall. He blinked.

"It's stuck."

"What do you mean, it's stuck?"

"I mean it's stuck! I can't get it off the wall."

Dean turned this way and that like an anxious meerkat. "Well think of something, because we weren't alone in here before."

Sam pulled out the fire poker and tried to pry the painting away from the wall. No good. He ran the knife between the wallpaper and the frame. No good either.

"Okay. They want the painting. They'll get the painting." He set the tip of the knife as close to the inner frame as possible and gently poked it through the canvas. Then he began to saw it free, quickly but without risking a tear.

"Come on, come on..." Dean practically jiggled where he stood. The last time he'd been here, that floating bitch had nearly stolen his body. This time, he wouldn't be able to see it coming.

There was a lull as Sam turned the blade ninety degrees to begin cutting a second side. And in that lull Dean heard the soft weeping of a woman.

"Sam—"

"Can't stop now, Dean."

Nerves afire, Dean turned his head as he sought the location of the sounds. It seemed to be across the room from them, which, as he recalled, wasn't all that far away.

 _Maybe if we ignore it, it'll ignore us_. Dean scoffed inwardly at himself. _Yeah, and if we hide under our blankies, we'll be safe from harm._

The weeps became sobs, pleading and desperate.

"No. Please, don't."

Sam turned, shining the flashlight along the opposite wall. There was nothing.

"No! I'm sorry, Hue! I'm sor— _guh!_ " The sound of slicing flesh, of gurgling breaths, of dead-weight hitting the floor. But what came next was worse than the actual murder – the knife returned to flesh, slicing it open like a burlap sack, followed by the unmistakable sound of spilled innards. And then the sounds of feeding.

"Sam. Got that painting yet?" said Dean stiffly.

"Um..." Guts roiling, the younger brother turned his back on the invisible history and tried to cut faster. But he could only press so hard before the canvas buckled, even though he held it taut with his other hand.

Dean had drawn the revolver, just to feel some level of control. Not that a gun, bullets or no bullets, could shoot the past.

"Got it!" There was the sound of Sam rolling up the canvas, and then the feel of his hand on Dean's shoulder, turning him around. "Move!"

He needed no further encouragement. He almost broke into a run but hitting his leg on a chair was enough to knock some sense into him. He allowed Sam to guide him, if only to get out of the parlour as quickly as possible.

Only once Sam had closed the doors and released a sigh did Dean feel any sense of relief.

"One down."

Sam rolled the painting up tighter. "Now we need to find the hanging tree and the valkyries."

"A valkyrie was just a winged chick who picked up dead warriors, right?"

"Yep. In Norse mythology, they decided who lived or died in battle, and took the worthy souls to Valhalla... Seems weird they would have a painting of that in a house like this."

"I never saw it. Or a hanging tree. There's a bunch of portraits on the second floor but not much else."

"There were some in the hall with the servants' bedrooms. Maybe we should check there next."

"Right. Lead on."


	23. Pappy

**11:58**

* * *

~23~ Pappy

The servants' hall started in the passage between the foyer and the dining room. The door was obscure, looking to be part of the coffered wall. Had Sam not come from that area of the house after he woke up in the footlocker, he wouldn't have known it was there.

He pushed the door open and shone the light in. The scarlet rug and stained, roan walls were familiar. But there had been lit candles before. Now the Winchesters' lights were the only illumination.

"Stay close."

The paintings here were small and simple and few, but he checked each and every one as he passed. He had the one of Death's horse, and now sought the gallows tree and valkyries, even checking the rooms he could access. None of them had any artwork so far but he didn't want to risk missing it. It was a dangerous balancing game – being thorough but not so thorough as to waste time.

They were approaching a corner, and Sam grew anxious. There wasn't much corridor left. It would all be a waste of time if he didn't find one of the paintings here.

"Anything?" asked Dean. He had one hand against the wall, head tilted down as he listened for danger.

"Nothing." Sam stepped around the corner and saw the foggy window at the other end, several metres away. That was as he remembered it. The gaping hole in the floor, however, was not.

"Stop."

Dean halted, brow creased. "What is it?"

Sam took a few cautious steps forward. The rug had been torn and the floorboards stabbed out irregularly over the abyss, as if the next section of floor had simply fallen from lack of support. Sam gauged the gap to be at least seven feet long, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing below.

Dean started around him, but was halted by his arm.

"No. You can't go any further."

"Why not?"

"Because there's a hole in the floor, that's why."

"You didn't mention a hole before."

"Because it wasn't _there_ before." Sam elbowed him. "I'm dead serious, dude. You won't make it across."

"And you will?"

Sam set his jaw. He had to. "Yes."

Dean frowned. But he couldn't stop his brother and they had to find those paintings. "If you fall, I'll kill you."

"Noted. Take this." Sam pushed the fire poker into his hands before stepping to the edge, gauging the distance.

He could make the jump. He _could_.

"Right." He retreated a few steps. "Stand back." Nudging Dean to the side to give himself a clear runway, Sam took a deep breath, assessed, ran, and leaped.

The only one more scared than him as he sailed over the void was Dean. He heard the pounding steps, the grunt of effort, followed by the stomach-dropping silence. He realized he'd stopped breathing, but could not exhale until he heard Sam's feet touching down on the other side.

"Sam?"

"I'm okay! I made it."

"Figured. If you're not screaming like a little girl, getting softer and softer every second—"

"Bite me." Sam took several deep breaths, heart still at a gallop, and looked behind him at his conquered foe.

 _What is it with this house and hell holes?_

"Well?" Dean demanded. "Is the painting there or not?"

Sam turned and shone the light down the hall. A few wood frames shone back, brighter than the roan walls. He checked each carefully, in case of ambiguity in the gallery rhyme. But so far, nothing. And he was running out of paintings.

"It's not looking good, man," he called back.

Dean cursed. "Then bunny hop that hole again and let's look somewhere else."

"No. Wait."

The last painting was at the end of the passage, on the wall left of the window. It was of a small white church – a chapel, really – nestled in a crescent-shaped fire break. The trees were turning orange with the end of summer, but the grass was still green around the chapel. To its right, the ground slopped upward, to a hill peak backed by grey sky. And on that peak was a gallows tree, the corpses of seven people hanging from its branches.

"Dean? I think I've found one."

"Hallelujah."

It was small, only about six inches by ten. Still, Sam cut it out of its frame like he did before and rolled it up for easier transport.

Lighter with relief, he almost turned away when he noticed something in the empty frame. There was just plaster, as though whoever put up the wallpaper never bothered to move the painting. A crease ran vertically a bit off centre. He could slide his knife down it.

"There's something here!" Sam called. He plucked the frame off its hook and set it on the floor before following the line with the knife, slicing wallpaper all the way down to the floor. Then he returned to the top and followed it up, over and down again.

"A hidden door." He poked around until he found a recessed latch. Tugging it over, it was with great caution that he pushed the door open.

"Sam," Dean hissed. "This is no time to explore!"

He pretended not to hear, poking the flashlight in and giving the room beyond a quick scan before stepping in further. He frowned. There didn't seem to be anything of interest. The window was boarded up from the inside, the walls were the same colour as the hallway, and there was a shoddy rug covering the floor. Discarded rags, a broken rocking horse, and a few candle sticks littered the ground. Nothing worth hiding. All in all, it was an insignificant room.

Sam stopped to the middle, carefully checking each wall for messages or anything of interest. Then he shrugged. A red herring. That was all.

He almost turned to go back when something dripped onto his forehead. He blinked, reaching up to wipe it off. He should have expected his finger to come away red. It always did.

He looked up, and recoiled. Stuck to the ceiling was a spindly metal bed frame, legs splayed out to the sides, head- and toeboards flattened. And tied to the bed with barbwire, spread-eagle, was a young man in cameo pants and a blood-stained muscle shirt. Wire was wrapped around his middle, his legs, his arms and his head, and every time he breathed, more droplets fell. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the beam of the flashlight.

Sam knew it was one of George Firandez's friends. Either Tyson or Dave.

"Hey. I'm gonna get you down, okay? Just stay calm."

The man didn't stay calm. He whimpered and writhed. He opened his mouth, releasing a gob of blood that just missed Sam, bursting on the floor.

"Shh, don't speak. Okay." Sam looked around for something to stand on, but then the man coughed.

"God...is...dead," he rasped.

Sam tried to take another step back, only for something round to catch under his foot. He looked down and turned. Frowning, he knelt, picking up a red cylinder with a brass cap at one end. A shotgun shell.

He didn't dare to feel hope until he scanned the floor with the flashlight again. This time he spotted a barrel sticking out from beneath a heap of discarded clothes. Around it were more shells, all unused. He picked up the weapon – a Winchester model, slide pump action shotgun, capable of holding five shots and packing a little more punch than Dean's revolver.

He couldn't believe his luck. He loaded the gun and scooped the rest of the shells into his pockets before standing, turning to speak to the man on the ceiling again. But something caught his eye, and he froze.

It was standing in the corner. A hulking man, taller than Sam and broader in shoulder. Everything, from his size to his clothes to the axe in his hands, spoke lumberjack. When he took a step forward, it was a wet and sticky sound, like he was wading through offal. Sam stepped back to keep the distance and shone the light in the spirit's face. Or what was left of it – most of the skin had been filleted away, exposing raw muscle and bone. The eyes were intact, though, an intense blue that showed the maniacal tint of madness.

He raised the wood axe stained with blood, old and fresh.

"Run," the young man on the ceiling garbled. Sam glanced up at him, torn. The ghost laughed.

"Pappy's home!" He raised the axe. But Sam was quicker.

BAM!

The lumberjack was blasted back into the shadows. Sam scooped up the flashlight, dropped in favour of pumping and aiming the gun. He put it in his pocket before pointing the weapon towards where he'd seen the spirit last.

"Sam?" came Dean's dim voice. "What's going on?"

Sam cursed. If Dean heard him in trouble he might try to jump the hole in the hallway. He couldn't risk that.

He looked up to the man tied to the ceiling. "I'll come back for you."

He had but a second to duck before the axe swung out of the darkness, thudding into the wall where his neck had just been. Sam leaped for the doorway, ignoring the ghost's frustrated roar.

"Don't run or else Pappy's gonna _kill you!_ "

Sam pulled the door shut after him, yanking the recessed latch closed even though he thought it pointless. Within moments his long strides took him to the edge of the hole in the hallway. But he nearly slid into it as he slammed on the brakes. The hole had lengthened.

"Sam?" Dean turned his head blindly, as though trying to assess the situation with hearing alone. "Was that a gunshot?"

"New toy."

 _Bang!_

He looked over his shoulder as the hidden door bulged in its frame. With the second impact, it split down the middle. One more and "Pappy" would be free.

"What the hell is that?" Dean demanded.

Sam didn't answer, retreating a ways like he did before. The first jump had been easy. This should be nothing.

Right.

"Dean, get out of the way."

His brother flatted himself against the wall, brow lined with concern. "Give it all you got, Sammy. Think deer, not moose."

The hidden door exploded apart, and to Sam it was a starter gun. He surged into a sprint, taking each stride into consideration as he neared. He wanted full momentum but he would lose it if he had to shorten a stride at the last moment.

Then, suddenly, he was at the edge. He threw everything he had into the jump, felt the strain in every muscle in his body. And then there was weightlessness. The void was below him, an endless abyss that both called to him and warned him away. Sam felt as though he were going in slow motion, the leap lasting an eternity.

But there was the other side. He was going to make it. He was going to make it!

Then, in the last critical moments, more floorboards fell free, disappearing into the void.

" _Dean!_ "

His feet had nowhere to land. They touched nothing, kept going down as he reached forward, flinging the shotgun ahead so he had both hands free. A protruding floorboard drove into his gut as he finally touched down, driving the air from his lungs and making him nauseous.

"Sam!" Dean couldn't see but he guessed what had happened by the awkward sound and his brother's pained gasps. He fell to his knees, hands searching until they found Sam's. They followed them up his arms before grabbing twisted fistfuls of his jacket. Dean hauled back with all his might before hooking an arm under Sam's, becoming the anchor he needed to pull himself up the rest of the way.

Sam gasped, rubbing his middle with a grimace. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Dean helped him up. "But care to explain all the ruckus?"

Sam turned towards the hole. The lumberjack was standing on the other side, hulking, breathing like an angry bull. Back-lit by the foggy window beyond, he seemed even bigger.

"Found one of George's friends tied up in that room. And this brute was guarding him."

"What brute?"

"Don't know who he is. Keeps calling himself..." Sam trailed off. Pappy had taken a step, seemingly onto nothing. Sam grabbed the flashlight and shone it at the ghost's feet. Floorboards were flying up out of the abyss, reattaching themselves and creating a bridge for the monster.

"Dean. I think he's manipulating the house."

"What?"

Sam reached into his jacket for the salt. But the tiny shaker would be like using a martini umbrella to combat a hurricane. The gun had had an effect before, so he scooped it off the floor and pumped the action.

Dean perked. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yep."

"Can I hold it?"

"Nope." Sam levelled it at the slowly approaching ghost. "Sorry, Dean, limited ammo."

He almost blasted Pappy to kingdom come when the man got close enough to be faintly lit by Dean's lantern. Those piercing blue eyes. Suddenly, Sam recognized him.

"It was you," he said. " _You_ killed your son."

Pappy stopped, cocked his head. Drool dripped out of a hole in his jaw.

"You tricked him to the pond. And you _murdered_ him."

Confusion replaced the madness in those blue eyes. He blinked once, twice.

"Thomas junior," said Sam, nodding. "Tom."

"Tom?" For a moment, the man looked like a man again. Skin on his face, hair combed, no chunks of flesh hanging off his body. "Tom."

"Yes." Sam lowered the shotgun a little. "Your little boy."

"Sam?" Dean hissed.

"Shh." He returned his focus to the lumberjack. He was staring at the floor, looking remorseful. Sam's heart leaped with hope. "Why'd you do it?" he asked softly. "Why?"

Pappy's lip trembled, breath hitching. Then he froze. A grin split his grotesque face and twin sapphire orbs gleamed at him in the dim light. "Because it was _fun_." Roaring with maniacal laughter, he leaped at the brothers.

BAM!

The shotgun recoiled in Sam's hold, the energy transferring through the butt to his shoulder. Sparks and smoke blocked his vision for a second, and then he saw a headless Pappy falling into the void without a sound.

With a sigh that almost sounded content, the rest of the floor reappeared from below. The boards fitted back together, nails driving themselves into place. Scraps of rug settled on top, knitting with the threads around them and becoming whole.

Sam shone the flashlight over the area, checking for flaws. He jumped as there was a sudden _bang_ , then another, as though something was hitting the floor from beneath. Then, silence. He panned the light over the floor one more time, and spotted something lying in the middle of the hall.

He stepped forward and picked it up. It was some kind of logbook. He opened it. The first entry was dated the first of January, 1844.

"Please, _please_ , tell me what's going on," said Dean. How he hated this. Blundering around like a decapitated chicken, unable to so much as provide cover for his brother when the going got rough. By the silence, at least, he knew their attacker was gone.

"I found something. A logbook. Doesn't look like it's of much use." Sam scanned the messy script, which was often blurred with water stains or dirt. But most of the book was empty; the entries stopped after the eighteenth of March. "Hm."

"What?"

"I'll figure it out later. We need to save George's friend."

There was no need. The man in cameo pants, ravaged by weeping punctures, tore out of the hidden room and charged towards the brothers. His eyes were wild and unseeing, and he showed no signs of slowing.

"Hey!" Sam strode forward and grabbed his arm, only to cry out and release him. Lengths of barb wire were still wrapped around the man's limbs and torso.

Dean heard the cry and turned sideways, throwing his shoulder into whatever was running at him. It hit someone's sternum and they rebounded, falling to the floor. Dean put his foot on them, pinning them down.

"Another ghost?"

Sam wiped his hands on his jeans, smearing red on blue. "George's friend. Looks like he got himself free."

"Buddy." Dean pressed a little harder on the squirming man. "You Tyson or Dave?"

"T-Tyson. Dammit, you're hurting me."

"Dean, I think you can lay off a little."

Dean slowly lifted his foot, and Sam helped Tyson up. He was trembling, either from pain or fear. Likely both.

"How do you know George?" said Tyson.

"I saw— I mean I met him a while ago," said Dean. "Said he was looking for you. No wonder he couldn't find you."

"How long have you been in there?" asked Sam.

Tyson shrugged. "Hours. Days. Dunno. Look, we gotta get out of here, bro."

Sam held up the shotgun. "Where did you find this?"

"That's mine." He made to take it, but Sam stepped back.

"It's no good to you, anymore. You had your chance."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

Dean held up pacifying hands. "Chill, man. We just need some answers. You and your friends were trying to find clues and figure out a way to get out of here, right? So what's the last clue you solved?"

Tyson stared at the shotgun as though it was the only thing in the hallway. "Dave managed to open some kind of tin box. There was a green candle inside."

"Good. What did you do with it?"

"Nothing, dude, it was just a candle."

"What other clues did you find?" asked Dean. "The paintings?"

"What paintings?"

"Never mind. What about the parlour or kid's bedroom?"

"We got into the parlour but not any kid's room. The last thing we tried to get before we all got separated was some kind of book in the room with all the plants."

That got their attention.

"What room?" asked Sam. "Where?"

"Upstairs," said Tyson. "Like, third floor."

Sam looked to Dean. "I'll bet the last painting's up there too." Back to Tyson. "Can you lead us?"

"I'm not going back there!" said Tyson, voice going up an octave. "Something killed George. I'm getting the hell out of here."

"Wait!" Sam tried to grab him where he wasn't entwined with barbwire, which was almost nowhere. But Tyson was scared, so he was fast, and he was down the hall, around the corner, out of sight and sound in moments.

"Come on!" Sam pulled Dean along as quick as he dared, but by the time they reached the foyer, Tyson was gone.

"Well that's the thanks we get for _saving your ass!_ " Dean called out to the house.

"Don't worry about it. Nothing more can hurt him." Sam checked his jacket, making sure he still had everything. "We've got two of the three paintings now. Let's try upstairs."

* * *

 **Garbage. Maybe one day I'll have the energy to rewrite this chapter...or the whole story...**


	24. Parasite

**12:13**

* * *

~24~ Parasite

Opening the door to the third floor, they were relieved to find themselves back in the normal hallway and not the pointless labyrinth of mutilated monsters. There were paintings here too, which Sam checked as they went by, searching for a valkyrie. Dean felt blindly along the walls, testing door knobs, grunting in frustration when they didn't open.

Until one did.

"Ha ha!" He pushed the door open and tried to go through, but Sam stopped him.

"Dude, I'm going first."

Dean skewed his mouth and gave a mocking bow. "Milady."

Rolling his eyes, Sam nudged him aside and stepped into the room.

Only to be stared at by dozens upon dozens of eyes.

"Ugh."

"What?" Dean pushed Sam in further to join him, and the lantern revealed even more eyes.

"Taxidermy," said Sam. "A _lot_ of it."

Every wall was packed with heads – elk, deer, caribou, moose, bighorn sheep – most including necks and shoulders. Mounts and display cabinets held skulls and skeletons of various creatures. There were fox and raccoon pelts and plaques with whole animals nailed to them. The floor closest to the door was covered in a grizzly rug, its gaping jaws facing towards the Winchesters. Display cases ran down the middle of the room beyond the rug, filled with wolverines, ermines, martens and rabbits. There were stuffed bobcats and coyotes and cougars on driftwood stands, posed on the prowl. Tree branches had been set in the walls to bear owls, hawks, ravens, buzzards and a bald eagle.

Dean scoffed as though he could see it all. "These people and their trophies."

Sam stepped further into the room, shining the light into a display cabinet full of birds. There was a pair of passenger pigeons, no doubt shot out of the sky as soon as their species needed them most. He shook his head. Ever since he and Dean were boys, the thought of killing animals was as appealing as skinning their own tongues.

"Is...is this a penguin?"

Sam turned around. Dean was feeling one of two penguin-like birds that were standing in a corner over a white, black-speckled egg.

"Kind of," he said. "It's a great auk. Hunted to extinction over a hundred years ago."

Dean stopped touching it. "There was a penguin-y bird in America and they killed them all."

"Yep."

"Dude, why are we still here?"

Sam kept progressing further into the room, passing a fireplace beneath a massive bull moose head. The antlers were as wide as outstretched arms. The glass eyes seemed to follow Sam as he moved along.

"Not really sure," he said.

"Ouch."

Sam turned again, relaxing when he saw that Dean had merely walked into another display.

"The hell was that?" Dean demanded, rubbing his knee.

"Bear cubs. Triplets."

"They killed babies too?"

Sam almost replied when he heard a fluttering sound. He turned back, shining the light up to tree branches that had been nailed to wood plaques in the corner. There, several crows had been stuffed and positioned in various poses. Some cawing, others preening, some staring down at him as though he were a tasty morsel of meat.

 _More crows_ , he thought, grimacing. He almost turned away when he noticed something gleaming in the beak of one of the birds. Squinting, he moved closer and didn't shine the light directly at it to avoid a reflection. It was a small vial. And there was something inside it that looked suspiciously like—

"Sam. Something's wrong."

This time when he turned, he could not relax. He didn't like how his brother was standing there, head bowed, hand to his face.

"What is it?"

Dean had been feeling it for a while, ever since the mishap in the cellar – a strange, wiggling sensation in the flesh of his eye sockets. At first he'd thought them muscle spasms. But the feeling had become more of something writhing under the skin. Now, they burned.

"Dean?"

There was Sam's hand on his shoulder. He struggled to not pull the blindfold off his face, to not scratch the hell out of his eyes.

"Sorry, man, I can't take much more of it."

"What? Dean, what's going on?"

"My eyes. They're—"

Suddenly his confession became a cry of pain, as what felt like rats began to chew through the back of his eye sockets. There was _definitely_ something moving around in there. Inside his head!

"Get them out! _Get them out!_ "

Sam stared in horror as dark slime oozed out around the blindfold, staining it black. Dean's fingers scrambled to grab hold of it, to tear it loose. Sam tried to help, but Dean kept backing away like a wounded animal, cursing.

Sam heard a sound behind him and looked back in reflex. There was nothing. Facing Dean, he tried to grab him, to calm him down. But he'd finally gotten a grip on the blindfold, and he ripped it off.

Sam's stomach churned. Inky black fluid gushed out of both sockets, like pus from boils. Dean pressed his hands to them, screaming in pain and horror, but that did not stop the tiny, wriggling worm-like tentacles from squeezing through between his fingers. Sam grabbed his wrists, trying to pull his hands away from his face.

"Let it out, Dean!"

Dean struggled, took a swing at the air. It caught Sam's cheek, but at least it got a hand away from his eye. And the parasite took its chance.

What had first been thought of as dozens of little worms were actually all part of one writhing mass. It squeezed out of the warm hole it had been lain in, where it had been allowed to incubate and grow, and fell to the floor. Dazed, it rolled away from the noise and light, finding refuge in a hole in the wall.

"Dean! Dean, there's another one!" Sam grappled with him, taking hold of his wrists again. " _Move your hands!_ "

In a moment of submission Dean relaxed his arms, allowing Sam to pull his hands away from his face. And the second parasite made its escape.

Sam released Dean and jumped clear as it tumbled to the floor, and then, without pausing to study the creature, he stomped on it as hard as he could. It burst like a slug, squealing before going limp.

Dean was panting. Red oozed down his cheeks and between his fingers. He was trembling.

"What...the f—?"

"I don't know. But it's dead now. You're okay."

"Don't talk to me like I'm four." Dean pulled his hands away, and again Sam's innards roiled. The skin looked raw and angry, eyelids still flat. But there were no more black tears, and he didn't seem to be uncomfortable anymore. Or at least, in pain.

"Dean...I know this is going to sound really weird, but..."

"I'm a hunter, too, man. Weird's in the job description at least a dozen times."

"I think I found your eyes."

Dean froze. "You're right. That _is_ weird."

"I'm serious." Sam pulled out the little clay jar from the gallery, the one Agnes had led him to as a crow. "I've got one here. I think the other is in that vial up there." He jabbed a thumb at the stuffed crows.

"Is this some kind of sick joke to you?" Dean snapped.

"I'm not—! Dean, why would I kid about this? Here." Sam plucked the lid off and tipped the jar into Dean's palm. The slimy eyeball rolled out, nerves and all.

Dean went green. "Please tell me you didn't just put—"

"It's your eye, Dean."

"Left or right?"

"I don't know!" Sam reined in his temper. "We don't have time to mess around. Just...put it in."

"Do you have any idea how dirty you sounded just then?"

" _Dean!_ "

"Alright, alright! Keep your pants on." Dean poked the cold slimy thing in his palm, grimacing. Sam wouldn't be doing this to him if he didn't think it would work. So, Dean pushed his right eyelids apart and popped the eyeball in.

In his many years as a hunter, he'd experienced all manner of unpleasant sensations. But this was by far the most repulsive. The ball turned and twisted and rolled until it was right way around and right way up. And then the nerves began to fuse with the severed ends in his skull, muscle fibres stitching together, tugging the eye this way and that.

Then, at last, control was his. He opened his eye, blinking several times until Sam's blurry face sharpened. Concern was blatant.

"Well?"

"...It worked." He couldn't believe it. He could see!

Sam deflated with relief. "Thank God."

Dean didn't even care that his first view was of dozens of dead animals. A view was a view. "Haha, yeah." He grinned like a fool, and Sam mirrored him.

"Now, the other one."

Dean happily followed him across the room, no longer afraid of walking into him or anything else. Now he felt like he had a chance, like _they_ had a chance.

"It's up there." Sam tipped his chin up at the stuffed crows.

Dean looked at them all, perturbed by how they all stared down at them. "Kinda...creepy."

"And they didn't look like that before."

"What?"

"They move."

"What do you mean, they—?"

A crow's head jerked, stiff and robotic, to look at them with one dead eye.

Dean grimaced. "Yep, they move."

Sam turned, spotted a chair by the fireplace. He picked it up and plunked it down beneath the branches before standing on it, reaching for the vial held in a bird's beak. Before he could touch it, another bird pecked him hard enough to draw blood.

"Ow!" He swatted the offender away and went for the vial again. But the bearer hopped to another branch, movements jerky, like a prop from an old movie.

"Give me that!" Sam made a lunge for it, but the bird stepped just out of reach. Then, to his horror, it turned the vial parallel with its beak, tilted its head back and swallowed it whole.

"Crap." He made another grab at the crow, missed, and fell heavily, bashing his knee on the floor. Pain shot out from his already injured leg, and he gritted his teeth, pressing on the wound.

Then, laughter. It was coarse and raw and cruel, and he looked up. It was one of the crows, throwing its head back and laughing hysterically.

The others began to do the same, one by one dissolving into fits of hilarity. Their robotic movements made the sight all the more disturbing.

"Sam?"

"I'm fine." He shrugged off Dean's support as he stood, glaring at the birds. He could see the one that had swallowed his brother's eye. It was still by the knot that looked like a face. But when Sam moved the chair and tried to reach for the crow, they all burst into flight, forcing him to lower his arm and cover his face from their flapping wings and tails. When they stilled, he saw that they had all changed places. They began to laugh again.

"We don't have time for this crap!" Dean strode over to the door, grabbed the shotgun and marched back over, already aiming at the merry murder. "Laugh at this, bitches!"

"Dean, don't—!"

BAM!

Feathers and splinters exploded everywhere. Four sets of stick legs fell to the floor. The laughter stopped. The crows turned their eyes to Dean. One made a soft gargling sound. Then it spoke.

"Kill."

Dean took a step back, Sam falling align with him. The birds began to chant.

"Kill. Kill. Kill."

"Dean, if you shoot them again, you might hit your eye."

"Yeah. Didn't think about that."

"Kill! Kill! _Kill!_ _KILL!_ "

The birds spread their wings and dove, claws spread, beaks open. Dean dropped the gun and picked up the chair while Sam pulled out the fire poker stub, and it was all they could do to not hit each other as the birds scratched at their faces, aiming for their eyes.

"KILL, KILL, KILL!"

Sam swung with his right hand and punched with his left, feeling the stuffed birds' frames shatter with every blow. The chant began to get softer as many of their number fell, broken, and were trodden underfoot. But they fought to the last bird, which was still baying for blood when Dean grabbed it from the air and ripped off its head.

It might have been a satisfying victory if mealworms hadn't gushed out of the stump of neck. But Dean swallowed his revulsion and shook them out before pulling a small glass vial from the hollow corpse.

"I really wish they would quit it with these damn bugs." Uncorking the vial, Dean wasted no time popping the eye back in his head. He resisted the urge to rub and scratch as it did its thing, and then finally, finally, his vision was whole once more.

He chuckled gleefully. "Hello-o-o beautiful." He picked up the shotgun again, admiring it as he held an open hand out to his brother. Sam stared, then sighed, emptying his pockets of shells.

"Sorry, Sammy. Big brother gets the big guns."

"I found it."

"Don't care."

Another sigh, but Sam didn't actually mind. He was just happy his brother could defend himself again.

As for Dean, as far as he was concerned, the one holding the gun was the one who was a threat. Anything that sneaked up on them would go for the threat first.

"...You said, another one."

Sam looked at him. "Eh?"

"Before. You said, there's another one." Dean turned to him, frowning. "Another what?"

For a moment he was puzzled. Then he grimaced. "Oh. That. Yeah. Something came out of your eye sockets. After you pulled off the blindfold. Two somethings, actually." He walked over to where Dean had left the lantern, pointing to the black smear with limp tentacles on the floor. "This."

Dean knelt, poking the mess with the gun. He winced. "Looks like the same stuff that was in the cellar."

Sam frowned. He hadn't thought of that.

"So where's the other one?"

"What?"

"The other...evil baby octopus. Where is it?"

Now Sam paled. He hadn't thought of that either. "I didn't see where it went."

A bump and a clatter. Whirling, Sam shone the flashlight at the other side of the room. A mount with a buck's head had fallen to the floor. He frowned at it, then aimed the light where it used to hang. Red caught his vision, and he panned to a wolf's head still on the wall. But it wasn't neatly stuffed and shaped. It looked like someone had just decapitated the creature and nailed its scruff to a block of wood. Its eyes sagged, blue tongue lolling from limp jaws, blood matting its fur and dripping around its neck.

Sam was about to comment on it when there was a slicing sound, followed by a wet plop. He turned again, this time spotting a whole bobcat on a driftwood stand. It had been disembowelled, fresh innards splattered all over the floor. Flies began to swarm over them. Where they had come from was anybody's guess.

"Gross." Dean scooped up the lantern and backed away from the wall, staring at a badger snarling down at him from atop a display cabinet. Long black spider legs emerged from its mouth before he could turn away. He shuddered.

"Let's get out of here."

But while the Winchesters had been battling crows, the surviving parasite from Dean's eye had been exploring. It used the unease and fear from the two living presences to mutilate the fabrication of the house; real eyes replaced glass ones – dead, white, rimmed with rotting flesh – and the animals began to reek of decay. The skin of a caribou head suddenly fell away, leaving only bloody muscle and bone on the wall, covered in maggots. The badger's fur seemed to move on its own until a horde of newly-hatched spiders burst out of the animal's mouth, ears and eyes. Cockroaches filled the display cases, swarming over songbirds and rodents. More and more of the insects seemed to appear out of nowhere, until the displays were packed and the roaches began to crush each other against the glass. From the mouth of a large bass squirmed a fat, pale, caterpillar-like creature that looked to have replaced the fish's tongue.

Over there, wasps were building a hive in a lynx's open jaws.

And there, larvae squirmed out through the skin of a bighorn sheep, falling to the floor where they writhed uselessly.

Ants swarmed over a rabbit, and within seconds it was reduced to a few patches of fur.

Beetles ate their way out of eye sockets. Ticks latched to exposed skin, swelling like balloons. Parasites burrowed into flesh to lay eggs. The room filled with the sounds of buzzing, hissing, clicking, chirping, crunching—

It was nature gone mad. The hunters turned to run, but a wild-eyed, spasmodic coyote was between them and the door, jerking, cringing, foaming at the mouth. Dark slime oozed out of its ears and eyes. Dean levelled the shotgun at it. A single blast annihilated half of the animal, and from it burst a swarm of black flies so dense it instantly filled the room, blinding the men. They cried out and thrashed around as the insects got into their ears and noses, tangled in their hair and latched to their clothes.

Dean eventually found Sam's shoulder and gripped his jacket, yanking him towards where he thought the exit was. They burst from the game room and yanked the door shut behind them, cutting off the horrid sounds instantly.

They took a minute to swat and brush off the flies that had hitched a ride, spitting out their little corpses, flicking them out of their ears and shaking them from their hair and clothes. They took turns checking each other, and then just stood there, repulsed.

"I am officially _sick_ of bugs."

Sam scoffed. "I'm just glad I don't have to describe it to you."

For that, Dean permitted himself a chuckle. But it was giddy, unstable. He cleared his throat.

"Better keep looking for that last painting. Split up?"

Sam paused. It was logical, yes, considering the countdown. But every time they'd done that, one or both of them got into a sticky situation.

"Fine," he said at last. "But we stay in the same area." He pointed to the right side of the hallway. "You check those rooms, I'll check these." He jabbed his thumb to the left.

Dean nodded, coming to the same conclusion. Stay within earshot. Things were not going to get easier from here.

* * *

 **Cymotha exigua. The tongue-eating louse. The stuff of nightmares. It's real. It's out there. Don't Google it. Hey! I said don't! Close that window!**


	25. Manipulation

**12:25**

* * *

~25~ Manipulation

As with many in the hallway of the second floor, most of the rooms on the third were inaccessible. So far the brothers only came across guest rooms, which were lavish but not as much as those belonging to the Corvus family.

"You know, something's been bothering me," said Sam, rooting through one of these rooms. Dean was in one across the way, and with the open doors it was easy to communicate.

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Something Lilly Andersen told me. You know, Agnes' great granddaughter. She said Agnes was the youngest child of Judge Thomas' youngest daughter. The family tree showed she was the youngest, period."

"...Okay."

Done looking, Sam returned to the hallway. "We heard a baby crying in the master bedroom. I'm guessing the blood meant it didn't live long. If it had been somewhere else we could have assumed it was a servant's kid. But..."

Dean joined him, leaning against the door frame. "Ariel's ghost looked pretty old. Her kids were grown up and had rugrats of their own when they all died. So maybe the infant wasn't the seventh grandkid. Maybe it was Ariel's fifth, one that died long before this whole fiasco happened." He paused, recollecting the appearance of Ariel's ghost. She was in a white dress stained with blood. Her wrists were slashed open, but so was her stomach. Surely she was too old to have been pregnant at the time of her death...

Sam chewed his lip. "Yeah. Maybe. I guess...Thomas and Angelina looked pretty young in that vision we saw in the music room. Sounds like this 'fiasco' started years before 1844."

"So say if it was Ariel who found out her husband was cheating, bided her time, plotted her vengeance until poof – she summons a creature that turns people into homicidal fruitloops. Why would she then kill herself? Assuming she did."

Sam shrugged and started down the hallway again. "I feel like we're thinking in circles. Maybe we should focus on our leads."

"Leads? There's more than one?"

"The paintings, for one," said Sam, holding up a finger in tally. "We know we need to find some records of the family activities. Could be journals, newspapers, history texts, anything. And Tyson said something about a book being in a room full of plants. Probably some kind of conservatory. It's gotta be nearby."

"You know what would be awesome? If we had a skeleton key." Dean rattled a door knob a little harder than necessary, frustrated by the number of broken and engaged locks.

Sam snorted. "If only."

Static. Both men looked to Sam's middle. He pulled out the walkie-talkie, which continued to hiss and spit. Snatches of words blurted through.

" _Bu... h... cht... ait... ult... ing... st..._ "

"Must be broken—" Sam's mouth clicked shut at Dean's angry gesture. So, despite the looming deadline, they listened.

Ω

"I'm pretty sure she hasn't left the morgue," said Garth, peering through the shutters to the morgue hallway beyond. He couldn't see much. He felt like he was trapped in a box.

He returned to the desk, to the heap of texts from the library. They were a mishmash of topics, from possession to curses to local fables. He'd looked through them all already, but he had to do _something_.

Lilly Andersen was half dozing in a swivel chair. She raised her head. "Maybe she's asleep in her office. You should go look for her."

Garth chewed his cheek, checked the time on his phone. It had been an hour since he last tried to call Dr Corrigan. He stood. "She must be. She wouldn't leave without locking up."

He was just reaching for the door knob when someone knocked. He smiled. "Speak of the devil and he shall—"

The door opened. His smile fell.

"Appear."

It was Detective Roberts. Head of the case, frustratingly suspicious of Garth and looking pissed. His radio was on the fritz but he didn't seem to care.

"Um...is there a problem, officer?" Garth squeaked.

Roberts had a way of controlling his eyebrows that would make everyone in a room feel like they were being scrutinized.

"What are you doing here, Ranger?" he demanded, peering over Garth's shoulder. Fortunately, Sam and Dean had already been returned to their coolers. But Lilly was an incongruous point in the room.

Roberts caught the scent instantly, and drilled "Ranger" Hank with a penance stare.

"Just...um..." Hank shuffled, didn't seem to want to back up and let Roberts through. So he pushed his way in.

"Wait! This isn't what it looks like."

Roberts scanned the room, staring at Lilly for several seconds before turning his attention to the desk. On it were piles of books. And none of them had anything to do with pathology.

He picked one up. "'Demonic Possession.'" He dropped it. Picked up another. "'A Study of Souls.'" Drop. Pick up. "'Cherokee Legends.'" He turned to Hank, eyebrow arched. "A bit of late night reading? Catching up on the latest trends?"

Hank had closed the door, looking nervous but steadfast. He was about to speak when Roberts' radio squealed through the static. Annoyed, he turned it off. It had been doing that all evening, ever since he staked out the place. It had been particularly finicky whenever he walked past this room, for whatever reason.

"I'm...working on a lead," said Garth. His nails were digging into his palms and he crossed his arms. "I'm thinking this was some kind of ritualistic killing. You know. Satanic worshippers or something."

Roberts looked more challenging than interested. "Oh? And you had to look it up here?"

"Library closed."

"Oh, right. And naturally you come to an examination room. Not a cafe or hotel suite."

Garth shuffled. "The smell helps me think."

With a sharp turn on his heel, Roberts marched to the stainless steel body refrigerators lining one wall. "Which ones are theirs?" He was reading the labels. Any second he would find them on his own.

"Who?" Garth slowly reached for his waistband.

"You know damn well who." He found Dean's drawer and pulled him out. He saw the bloodied sheets, from the strange, postmortem wounds no one saw him attain. "What do we have here?" He lifted the sheet, exposing Dean's arm and blistered face. "Mm hm." He turned, saw Sam's drawer next to his brother's. He pulled it out too, saw more blood. He turned.

"Care to explain th—?" He broke off, staring down the barrel of Garth's gun, aimed between his eyes.

"I'm sorry, detective. You shouldn't have come here."

The nervousness was gone. Hank still looked scared but Roberts could see the determination, the calm strength of a well-worn soldier.

"Why were you following me?" Hank demanded.

"Perhaps for the same reason that you're here in the middle of the night with a bunch of freaky books and an old woman."

"Oh? And what reason is that?"

"Something's wrong with this case. And I think you know more than you're letting on."

He wasn't going to say more aloud. Not because he didn't want Hank thinking him a nutbar, but because he didn't want to admit it to himself – that the world wasn't so black and white as the academy would have one believe. There wasn't just the real and the not-real. He never really noticed until he passed his exams and got the detective mantle, when he was permitted to think and puzzle things over. The weird ones were few and far between, but that made them stand out all the more: a perfectly healthy person whose heart exploded while they slept. A mauling in a public bathroom. A string of bloodless corpses in the lake. They blamed it on leeches.

And now five vics in one week, all appearing to have been scared to death. Roberts would have called a hunt for a serial killer, if there were obvious indications of homicide. The bloodless corpses of '07, however, _had_ been the work of a serial killer, he was sure. They'd had no leads, but, funnily enough, a couple of feds rolled through, and suddenly, poof, the killings stopped and the feds vanished. No arrests were made. To cap off the weirdness, an abandoned shack was found full of decapitated drifters. At least, they were assumed to be drifters. They weren't in the database. And their heads were never found.

Although Roberts never shared his speculations with anybody, he doubted the suits had been feds. Probably some patriotic vigilantes with serious illusions of grandeur. And here, pointing a gun at his head, might very well be another one, whose companions failed to catch the killer and were killed themselves.

"Well," said Hank. "What are we going to do about this?"

Hank wasn't going to shoot him. Roberts stood taller, dwarfing the scrawny man. "First, I think you should tell me who you really are. Let's start with a name."

Garth paused, then opened his mouth. Before he could speak, Roberts' radio turned itself on and began to hiss at them.

All three stared at the device. When the detective switched it off, it turned on again.

"Damn thing." He pulled it off his belt, and was going to take out the batteries when Lilly got up from her chair, raising a shaky arm.

"Don't!"

He froze, staring at her. She waved between the two men.

"Give it to Garth."

Roberts looked to the other man. "So. Garth, is it? Garth, I'm arresting you for impersonation of an—"

"Oh, will you shut up! Shut up and give him the damn radio," Lilly snapped. "Hurry! I'm limited for time, you know." She had the look of a very angry grandmother, and finally, Roberts decided there was no harm in giving Garth the radio. He was also too curious to do anything once Garth took it, retreated, and put the gun down.

Garth looked to Lilly. "Now what?"

"Speak into it."

"What?"

"Speak. Now."

Still hesitant, Garth lifted the radio to his mouth and pressed the talk button. "Hello?"

Sputter. Hiss. Garble. Garth shrugged at Lilly, who gestured at him to try again.

"Hello. Can anybody hear me?"

Spit. Sizzle. Then...

" _Garth?_ "

The man's face lost every drop of colour. He gripped the radio tightly.

"Dean?" He almost forgot to release the talk button.

" _Holy hell, Garth, is that you?_ "

He had to sit down. "Man, it is so good to hear your voice...Where are you?"

" _We're in Corvus Manor._ "

"We? Is Sam with you?"

A pause. Then. " _Hey, Garth._ "

"Sam! How you doing, man? What—?"

"What the devil is this?" Roberts demanded. "Some kind of joke?"

" _Who was that?_ "

Garth grimaced. "It's no joke, sir. Please, have a seat." He hit the talk button. "That was Detective Roberts. He found...well he found..." A muscle jumped in his jaw. "He found your bodies before I did...Over."

" _Are they okay?_ "

"Yes. Well, no. Someone's been tampering with them. You've got a bite and a sliced shoulder. Dean's fist looked like it went through a window, his arm's cut and he's got some nasty burns. Both of your anti-possession charms were branded. Over."

A long pause. Finally, Garth spoke again.

"I'm sorry, guys. I should have been there. I'm sorry it had to end this way."

" _Garth_ ," said Dean, " _we're not dead._ "

Garth shook his head. Denial was quite the hurtle to overcome. "I'm afraid you are. Your bodies are here, and we're speaking through a walkie-talkie. Classic trans-veil communication. Over."

" _I told you, we're in Corvus Manor. Kind of._ "

"Kind of?"

" _We're not really here._ " Sam again. " _Nothing we see is...real. We're in the Collective Unconscious. Ever hear of it?_ "

Garth blinked, glancing at Lilly. "Yeah, but...that's lingo for psychics or whatever. It's not real, is it?"

" _It is. Garth, we need your help, man._ "

"What do you need me to do?"

" _We need you to go to Lilly Andersen. Get her to tell you everything she knows about what might have happened to this family a hundred and fifty years ago._ "

"No need, she's right here."

" _Seriously? What are you doing?_ "

"Sitting at the morgue with your bodies...Don't take that in a weird way."

" _Trying not to. Lilly, got anything for us?"_

She took the radio, shaking her head. "I already told you everything I know. The only one who knows more than I vanished decades ago."

" _Agnes. Right. Well we met her._ "

"What?"

" _Yeah, she's been appearing to us as a child, or a crow. But only for a few moments at a time. It's like she gets tired. Kind of like a ghost._ "

"And what is she doing?"

" _Trying to help us. But we're running out of time. We're supposed to solve clues to find a way out, and so far_ —"

"You." Lilly pointed to Detective Roberts. "Go find Dr Corrigan. Now."

"Who?"

"Dr Corrigan, the examiner. Just humour me, young man."

Although puzzled, Roberts obeyed, closing the door behind him. He was puzzled because, for one, he wasn't sure how an examiner would be of use right now, and for another, he'd never heard of this Corrigan. He knew most of the staff in this morgue, well enough to be on a first-name basis. Helped to get what they were really thinking.

"— _haven't found the last painting, but even if we do, we have less than an hour left, and then it'll be too late_ ," Sam finished, unaware of the interruption.

Garth stiffened, taking the radio from Lilly. He looked at the clock. Twelve thirty in the morning. "Too late for what?"

" _We'll be trapped here, like George and his friends._ "

"George is with you?"

" _Not really. He's around somewhere._ "

" _Hey, Garth_ ," said Dean. " _Don't let anybody chop our bodies up, okay? We need somewhere to go once we get out of this place._ "

Garth tried to smile. People can hear smiles. "Gotcha covered, bud." He looked up as Lilly waved at him, gesturing for the radio. He passed it to her.

"I want you boys to listen to me carefully. And heed me. Time is a man-made construct."

A long pause.

" _Okay_ ," said Sam.

"You're perceiving it as you always have, in your subconscious. Your internal clocks are keeping time with clocks in the real world, thus affecting the time in the Collective Unconscious." She paused, letting them think that through.

" _So...if we think time slower, time here will slow down?_ "

"I would assume so."

" _And we'll buy ourselves more._ "

"Which you'll need, if you keep dragging your feet."

" _Alright, we'll give it a shot._ "

" _One more thing,_ " said Dean. " _Tie_ —"

Hiss, sputter, gurgle. Connection failed.

"Blast." Garth looked to her. "This complicates things a bit."

Ω

"...Garth...? Garth!" Dean looked at the walkie-talkie display. It was dead. "Dammit."

"What were you trying to tell him?" asked Sam.

Dean pressed a few buttons, but it was unresponsive. "To tie our bodies down. He said our anti-possession tattoos had been damaged. Means our meatsuits are plump for the picking."

"He also said our bodies were hurt." Sam put a hand to his shoulder. The cut still burned. "Which means that, whatever happens to us here, happens out there."

"Damn. Here I was thinking we were safe from death."

Sam released a breath, then headed back for the stairs. So far, the grandfather clock was the only keeper of time he'd come across, and he wanted to be able to see if Lilly's advice would work.

In the foyer, one look at the clock turned his stomach to ice. Twenty eight minutes left.

"Yikes. We're cutting it a little close," said Dean.

"Aren't we always?" Sam stood toe to toe with the grandfather clock, studying its yellowed face, curlicue numbers and ever advancing hands. As he watched, yet another minute clicked away.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

"Time is a man-made construct. Used to organize the past and plan and predict the future. It doesn't exist. It's just another way for people to try to make sense of reality."

Dean stared at the back of Sam's head, face lined with puzzled concern. Then he realized...the soft clicking of passing seconds was getting slower.

 _Tick...Tock...Tick...Tock..._

Dean was in the same plane. He was probably hindering Sam's progress just by not thinking the same. But he couldn't wrap his head around the idea of time not being real. So he just thought of a clock ticking even slower than it was now.

Slower... Slower...

 _Tick..._

 _Tock..._

 _Tick..._

 _Tock..._

"We did it, Dean."

He'd closed his eyes. Opening them, he looked at the pendulum through the clock's dusty glass door. It was swinging less than a quarter of its normal speed.

"Huh. Does that mean...we actually have more time?"

"Ever get one of those dreams that seemed to last for hours, only to wake up and realize you've been asleep just a few minutes?"

"Yeah. Actually that happened when we had to sleep in the kid's room."

"Well if time's just a harness people put on the passage of motion in the real world, then it must be flexible here. As long as we keep thinking it that way," said Sam. "Everything's...moving the same way, but as long as this clock is slowed, we have a chance to finish what we started. That's probably why it wouldn't stay broken. It's the only one in the house."

Dean paused, then shook his head. "I'll take your word for it. Let's get on with this."


	26. Hanger

**Sorry, lads and lassies. School's a turd. And it's gonna keep being turdious for a few more weeks.**

 ** _Help me_.**

 **Let's see... Dean can see again, they found two of the three missing paintings, they talked to Garth and Lilly via walkie-talkie and consequently managed to find a way to buy themselves more time, by slowing the grandfather clock. Go.**

* * *

 ***12:33* (asterisks = snowflakes for the slowed time)**

* * *

~26~ Hanger

The brothers resumed their systematic search of the third floor, Sam investigating the rooms on the left side of the hallway, and Dean the right. There weren't many left to look into, as most were locked. They got to the end of the hall without opening another door.

"Crap," Dean grumbled.

"There's only one more area to check – most of the east wing."

"And here." Dean jabbed his thumb upward, and Sam looked up to see a trapdoor.

"Right. It's probably just another place for servants to stay."

"In the attic? Cozy."

Sam reached up and tugged the chain hanging from the trapdoor. It swung down, a ladder unfolding as he continued to pull the chain. Absolute darkness hovered overhead.

He went first, pausing to pan the space with the flashlight before climbing the rest of the way up. Dean followed, dusting off his hands before standing, lifting the lantern high.

The room was large but unfinished, lined with beams and floored with rough planks. The brothers stepped away from each other, illuminating shelves, chests, and storage crates. There were racks with old clothing, boxes of broken toys, stacks of dishes and piles of mouldy, moth-eaten blankets.

And, they realized, the darkness was not so absolute. There was a light at the far end, beyond the randomly placed standing shelves. They made their way closer, but they were cautious, checking each shadow, turning to ensure nothing was sneaking up on them.

Then finally, at the end of the attic, they came across what appeared to be a shrine. A line of candles stood on a makeshift altar, shortest at either end and tallest in the middle. And before them was a row of wax dolls.

They weren't art. They were barely recognizable as people. They were blobs of pale wax that had slight humanoid shapes. But they were in a perfect row, standing on their own, and there wasn't a speck of dust on the altar.

"That's creepy." Dean picked one up, inspecting it closer. Its potato-esque head had faint indications of eyes and a nose, and lines had been pressed in to show hair.

Sam turned away, shining the flashlight at the walls. His heart soared at the sight of what looked like picture frames, leaning against each other between two beams.

"Who would have made these?" Dean asked the air. He didn't like how they were standing there, in a perfect row. So when he set the one in his hand down, he didn't put it back in its place.

But...there was something wrong. It took him a few seconds to figure out what it was, and when he did, he wondered if there was a reason for it.

"Eleven."

"Eh?"

"There are eleven dolls."

On his knees, Sam turned from the stored paintings, staring at him.

"Shut up." Dean faced the other way, moving to the opposite wall from his brother. There, the lantern's light revealed a cot with a flat, straw mattress, a mess of blankets piled on top. Sitting on the floor, beside a stick of charcoal, were loose pages of various sizes and shades.

Setting the lantern on a crate, Dean picked up the pages and sat on the cot, which was so low to the floor his knees were almost up by his ears. The calligraphy was thick but still legible, and he began to read.

 _Bede watches. Bede listens. The Crows don't know that Bede can listen. They don't know Bede can read and write. Can understand. They think Bede is stupid. So Bede pretends to be stupid..._

 _Bede knows what happened to the baby. Knows what happened to the young master. Knows why the horse threw the mistress. Can't tell anybody. If Bede does, it will come after Bede._

 _The old stories are true. Don't say its name or it will find you. Don't look into its eyes or it will steal your soul..._

Frustratingly, the words here were blotched by water stains. The next legible script was on something else altogether.

 _The Crows let Bede stay here because Bede once saved the good master's life. Found him in the snow, gave him warmth. But the others despise Bede. They don't like Bede's face. Bede did not set fire to it. God did. Bede is different. Not evil._

 _Not evil._

 _The Crows don't hurt Bede. But they don't eat with Bede, play with Bede, listen to Bede's stories. Good master apologizes, but Bede doesn't mind. Bede hears all the gossip. Is entertained. Collects candle tears and makes friends. They listen. They will protect Bede. Always._

More warped writing. Dean dropped the page, took up another.

 _She's gone. Bede's friend is gone. The Crows took her, because they thought Bede stole from them. They think Bede is a thief because Bede is missing a hand and looks ugly._

 _She was Bede's favourite. Found some bees wax for her hair, so she was pretty. She was the youngest. Most tolerant. And they took her._

 _So Bede took from them. Became what they made Bede out to be. They never come up here, so this is where Bede will keep it until they give her back._

 _Bede had told her the darkest secret. Had told her what happened to the baby. Bede promised to tell whoever brought her back what happened to the baby. Promise._

 _Promise._

Dean jumped at a loud thud, but it was just Sam, slamming the palm of his hand against a wooden beam.

"It's not here either," he growled, standing and moving away from the stored paintings.

Dean frowned at the pages in his hands. "No. It's here, Sam. The last painting is here."

He gestured at the frames. "I checked all of them. No valkyries."

"Trust me. Just...look again."

Sam sighed, knelt and began to tip the paintings out from between the beams one by one, looking at them closely. They weren't very good, which was likely the reason they were up here. But so far, no winged women carrying souls up to Valhalla.

He was gazing at the third to last painting when he paused. It was of a battle field, but the fallen soldiers were just faintly indicated, ghosts sprawled in their uniforms, clutching bayonets or slumped over abandoned cannons. In the distance, a Stars and Stripes and a Union Jack burned, and beyond that, blue hills rolled under grey skies.

The sharpest points in the painting were the carrion birds, which stood on the faces of the fallen spirits or flew towards the hills, seemingly with a purpose.

And suddenly, it made sense.

"This is it, Dean." Sam pulled the painting free of the others and set it on the floor. It was large, and so he cut it from the frame as he did the others, for easier transport.

Dean watched over his shoulder as he worked, and frowned. "What?"

"Battles draw the attention of carrion birds. Crows, ravens, eagles. What if _they_ are the valkyries?"

"...I guess that makes sense. I just hope we're not wrong."

"Nothing else comes close." Sam rolled it up and stood, picking up the flashlight. "Let's go. I feel like I'm being watched."

* * *

They left the ladder to the attic lowered, moving at a trot to the other, distant end of the manor. Bursting into the gallery, they barely paused to check for danger. Sam led the way to the first vacant wall spot, beneath the balcony on the other side of the room.

"Which one goes here?" Dean asked.

The question was answered at the sight of a noose someone had drawn with chalk beneath the nail. Sam pulled out the smallest painting, taken from the servants' hallway, and unrolled it before impaling it on the nail.

"Now what?"

They stepped back from the gallows tree painting, watching it intently. Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then a shimmer wavered around the canvas, and a frame appeared, making the piece whole. It was now as it should be, where it should be.

Odd. Dean thought he could feel a breeze. Smell fresh air. Hear the whispers through trees. They should have been comforting sensations, but he was plagued with sudden malaise, and he turned. His heart jolted.

A body was hanging in the middle of the room, near the barren pedestal. The rope around its neck hung from somewhere above, hidden in darkness.

"Sam."

Sam turned, and blinked.

"Who do you suppose that is?"

Cautious, Dean moved closer. The lantern's light revealed the burlap sack that was over its head, and the eye and mouth holes that had been cut into it, a mockery of the privacy one had upon execution. Its clothes were tattered and caked with what looked like mud or even paint.

"Maybe it has the next clue on it somewhere?" said Dean suggestively.

Sam shook his head with a grimace. "The message before said the three paintings together would tell us what to do next." He pulled the other two from his jacket. "Come on, another one goes there."

They hastened across the gallery, to the wall south of the door. There, another vacant spot stood in wait for its adornment. Drawn on the wall was a hoof print.

"Death's horse." Sam unrolled the painting from the parlour and stabbed it on the nail. It, too, became whole with a frame once more. But if the brothers expected a similar appearance of the art's focus, they were mistaken. As they watched, the painting instead changed, colours bleeding into one another, the mutilated horse melting away.

They were captivated as the whole piece became like a TV screen. They were in a pasture, the rear of Corvus Manor to the north and the chapel to the west. A set of white horse ears were in the foreground, as though the brothers were riding the beast. It lowered its head to graze, and for several moments their only view was of the lush green the horse had all to itself.

Then, a sound. Ears perking, the horse raised its head. A boy was running through the cemetery, two framed paintings under his arm. He was as white as a sheet and there was vomit down his front. He clambered over the low wall between the pasture and the cemetery, falling on his face but leaping to his feet to continue his flight. Wild eyes kept shooting over his shoulder at the manor, and in his haste he couldn't even run in a straight line.

The horse turned its head to follow the boy's progress, allowing the Winchesters to see him reach the boundary wall. He tried three times to throw the paintings up and over the stacked slate, but gave up, leaving them in the grass and beginning to climb.

He made it only halfway up before falling and twisting his ankle. Even then he tried to scale the wall, so desperate he was to escape. In the end, he began to claw at the slate, as though to burrow through it. In minutes his hands were bloody, nails gone, and no closer to freedom.

The horse continued to watch, and so did the hunters. Then it approached, head bobbing with every stride, until it stood over him. He was wearing the uniform of a scullion, now stained with blood and sick. The boy rolled over, teary, to look up at the horse. He couldn't have been older than twelve. He reached up to pet the horse—

Then screamed as the beast stepped on him, deliberately, pinning him down. The horse lowered its head. What happened next, the Winchesters did not know. The paint melted, dripping off the frame. Within moments all that remained was a blank canvas, a puddle of coloured sludge drying on marble floor.

The brothers stared at it, then at each other.

"What just happened?"

"Beats me."

Sam scratched the back of his neck. "Well. Guess we know who stole the paintings."

"But do we care about that?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but then, the brothers heard a soft, stiff cracking sound and turned.

The hanging corpse, dark in the gloom, remained the only incongruous figure in the gallery. It was also the only thing moving.

The head snapped to one side, then the other, neck cracking. As it continued to jerk from side to side, the body's arms rose, straight out to its sides, forming a cross.

"Dean."

"One step ahead of ya." Dean pumped the shotgun and held it level with the awakened corpse.

Its unnerving head jerks got faster and faster until it paused. With another sickening crack, its jaw opened, a ragged breath sucking into the mouth hole of the sack. Its efforts to scream were naught but wispy keens. And then, as though its noose was on ceiling tracks, the body began to drift towards the brothers.

"Yeesh." Lip curling, Dean stepped to meet it, wanting to get a full blast into the monster.

BAM!

It recoiled, clothes peppered with holes. But it kept coming, head snapping side to side, trying to scream.

BAM!

The second shot was even less damaging, and Dean retreated, pushing Sam back behind him before reloading.

"Go hang that last painting, Sam."

"But—"

"Do as I say!"

Although loathed to leave his brother to face the thing alone, Sam ran for the stairs. Hopefully that corpse was the only obstacle, and he needed only to place the painting of the valkyries to complete the challenge.

At first, he didn't realize the hanger was ignoring Dean and coming after him.

"Sam, look out!"

Halfway up the stairs, he glanced back. Forward again, and his flashlight blazed across the body, hanging there at the top of the stairs, its rope disappearing into the darkness above. Startled, Sam nearly fell backwards, but regained his footing and drew his knife.

Then Dean was at his side, aiming the shotgun.

"I think it wants the painting."

The corpse drifted down towards them, arms still stretched out to the sides, keening. The third gun blast was as effective as the first two, and the brothers were forced to retreat off the stairs. The body followed, rope still straight up into nothing.

Suddenly, Sam was struck with an idea. He hefted the knife, aimed, and threw. The blade chopped through the air, end over end, towards the corpse's head – and missed.

As the knife clattered somewhere in the dark, Dean turned to him, aghast.

"What was that?!"

"The rope, Dean! Shoot the rope!"

Realization spawned, but too late. The hanging man was right before them. It began to spasm worse than before.

Dean punched it. It was like hitting a sandbag. He grasped the shotgun with both hands, but as he raised it, intending to strike with the butt of it, the hanger convulsed. A spray of foul, dry dust burst from the ragged mouth hole, over the brothers. Before they could stop themselves, they inhaled. The dust lined their lungs, their throats and noses, and suddenly there was precious little air in the gallery.

They staggered back, coughing and gasping desperately. The corpse kept pace, croaking, intending to attack again.

"Shoot...rope," Sam gasped. It felt like a hand had closed around his throat. And whatever air got to his lungs did little for them.

Dean swayed as he raised the barrel up past the hanger's feet, waist, torso, and head, aiming at the rope. He had one shot. The monster would not give him time to reload.

BAM!

The rope exploded apart. It looked, for a moment, that a few strands would hold, but as the full weight of the hanger bore down, they snapped, and the body collapsed in a heap.

But the brothers still could scarcely breathe.

Dean didn't bother with words. He gestured that his brother make for the stairs and Sam obliged, struggling to stay conscious. The air seemed so thin...

He was slowing by the time he reached the top of the stairs. He was crawling by the first corner. He knew the last empty wall space was on the other side of the gallery, but it might as well have been on the other side of the world.

He didn't realize he'd collapsed until someone grabbed his shoulder. He jerked up, vision swimming, but it was just Dean. Then they were on their feet again, staggering down the colonnade. Forty feet to go. Thirty. Twenty.

A loud, blood-curdling scream. The corpse drifted up behind them, its shriek now in full without the noose around its neck. It convulsed again, and Sam shoved Dean out of the line of fire before the choking dust reached them.

Dean hit the floor. He was almost too weak to get up again. He turned sluggishly. Sam was down, gasping breathlessly, clawing at his throat. His face had turned red and was going on purple when the hanger came for Dean.

But he was already lurching for the third painting, lying on the floor near his brother. He snatched it up and staggered for the last empty patch of wall. He didn't look back. Didn't think of the danger. He put every ounce of energy into reaching their only hope for salvation.

He knew the hanger was right behind him by the time he stabbed the valkyrie painting onto the nail in the wall. And, desperate for a full breath, he inhaled more of the choking dust that came from the rotting corpse.

Dean fell to his knees. Only the barest whispers of air got through, just enough to remind him what it felt like. The hanger gripped the back of his neck, cold, dry fingers wrapping around like a noose.

He knew then that his plan had failed. He couldn't move. His mouth was like sandpaper and his eyes were dry and sticky, yet he could see his hands shrivelling as every drop of moisture was drawn out of them, leaving skeletal remains.

It was happening to the rest of his body. His cheeks sucked against his teeth, his chest became a hollow drum. And then, for the third time that night, he felt it. A sliver of ice driving into the back of his skull. It was the spirit of the cursed Corvus using Dean's consciousness as a conduit to his body in the real world. The cold intensified—

And suddenly, it was gone. The cold, the hand on his neck. And although he still could not draw breath, he no longer resembled a sun-dried tomato. He fell on his side, and was just able to see movement in the corner of his vision. It looked like a large black pair of wings, flapping frantically. He managed to flop onto his back, to see some kind of humanoid bird creature had latched itself to the hanger's head. The corpse wailed and thrashed, but was helpless as two more of the monsters appeared and clung to it.

Then Dean's vision failed and he knew not what happened next. But whatever it was, it boded well for him and his brother. Air filled his lungs in a sudden rush, and the darkness faded from his eyes. He coughed raggedly, and he could hear Sam doing the same not far off.

"Dean?" he rasped. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He sat up, relishing the lungfuls. "What were those things?"

"What things?"

Dean looked around. All that remained was a pile of old clothes and a severed noose. "...Nothing."

Pushing himself up, he rested against the banister as Sam came over, looking pale and ready to hurl.

"That was just gross. I can still taste that guy."

Although that statement was ripe for Dean's normally stellar wit, he just couldn't find anything worth saying.

"What the hell?"

Dean turned to follow Sam's gaze, and frowned. Gone were the painted crows on the ghostly battlefield. Now there was a crouching figure with the proportions of a child, sexless, hairless, and covered in tough, leathery skin. A pair of greasy black wings, feathers untidy and broken, stuck out of its shoulders and hung over it in rest. The creature had long talons at the end of its fingers, dewclaws partway up its forearms. Its face was half human, half bird – no mouth, chin or nose, just a curved beak-like protrusion, skin stretched over it and leaving no discernible features. The rest of its humanoid head was bald, black voids where its eyes should be and holes in place of ears. It crouched on a blank background, staring out of the painting. Out at them.

"A valkyrie," said Sam. "Or at least, someone's image of one."

"Didn't anyone tell them they're supposed to be hot chicks?"

"Just be grateful they took the spirit and not us. Let's get out of here."

"Wait." Dean crouched by the heap of clothes and pawed through them until he found a little blob of wax. Upon closer inspection, Dean knew it to be the doll missing from the collection in the attic.

"What's that?"

"It's what some dude called Bede wants," said Dean, standing. "Wrote that he took the painting because the Corvuses thought he'd stolen the other two, and had taken this doll as punishment. Bede promised that he would tell 'the darkest secret' to whoever returned it."

"Right. So, back to the attic, then."

The thought of leaving the gallery for good was an appealing one, and they hastened to the stairs and down to the first level. Sam hunted for his knife and Dean grabbed the lantern from where he'd left it near the horse painting, and they met at the exit.

But decades of hunting had honed the brothers' senses into barbs that snagged on any hint of danger. They paused, one holding up a knife, the other a shotgun, and they both turned to look at the other side of the gallery. Something was looking back.

Black slime dripped from its mouth. Maggots fell out of its wounds. Dead white orbs stared at them from a starved face. It was Death's horse, standing beneath the colonnade in semidarkness.

"Let's...just go," said Sam.

"Good idea." They closed the door behind them and made for the west wing.


	27. Fetus

***12:35***

* * *

~27~ Fetus

"Is it still behind us?"

Sam turned. The pale eyes of Death's horse, as always, were just outside the reach of his flashlight. They never saw the creature move or heard it take a step. It was always just there. Watching them.

"Do you have to ask?" he mumbled.

Even climbing up the ladder to the attic didn't make them feel any better. But the beast hadn't hurt them so far, so they stopped looking out for it as they approached Bede's shrine. The candles were still burning, none of them were shorter. The eleven wax dolls were in a perfect line on the altar, which was little more than an overturned crate covered with a purple shroud.

Dean pulled the twelfth doll from his pocket. In his pages, Bede had promised to tell the "darkest secret" to whoever brought back his favourite doll. Although Dean had no desire to meet this Bede, a dark secret was something to be desired at a time like this.

"Right. Well. Here's your doll back." Dean set it at the end of the row, as straight as he could manage, and stepped back.

For several moments the brothers stared, waiting for something to happen. Anything. But as the seconds drew on despair clutched at their hearts. For although they had slowed the grandfather clock, they had not stopped it, and it seemed they had just wasted more of their limited time.

"Fine." Dean stepped forward again, intending to knock the creepy little figures over. But then the one they recovered moved.

It wiggled its tiny arms, shook its tiny legs, and stretched its tiny back. Then it turned, leaving the line of its brethren towards the nearest candle. Grabbing hold, it began to shinny its way up the stick, slowing as its hands tried to mend with the candle. But it made it to the top, and there, in the heat of the flame, its lumpy head began to melt.

Slowly, a mound of cooling wax grew on the altar, and drip by drip the doll lost its shape. As the shoulders melted, the bit of a key emerged.

Dean dared not take it until it fell from the stub that was all that remained of the doll. And when he did, it was a relief to back away.

"Let's get out of here."

Both saw Death's horse between the shelves as they made for the exit, but neither acknowledged it, focusing on the space before them. They closed the attic trapdoor, for reasons they did not know, before testing the key.

Door after door they tested. None yielded to the key. The brothers tried the ones in the east wing, also to no avail.

"Second floor," said Sam quickly, seeing Dean's taut form.

"How do we even know it's for a door?"

Sam looked at the key. It was black and simple, its lock most likely to dissuade curious souls, not thieves.

"Dunno. But it's the right size. Come on."

Back on the second floor, Dean began to test doors with the key while Sam checked their time on the foyer's grandfather clock. Just over twenty minutes left, by its reckoning. Its pendulum still swung less than a quarter of its normal pace but didn't seem to want to go any slower, despite Sam's attempts. As long as it stayed that way, they had well over an hour left in real time.

"Sam!"

Dean's voice was faint but calm. Sam hurried back up the stairs and jogged down to the west wing, not daring to feel hope until he saw his brother beckoning him from a doorway.

"Looks like an office," he said, turning and stepping inside.

Ignoring a glimpse of the white horse further down the hall, Sam followed. Two windows in the far wall let in limited, foggy light, and he used his flashlight to chase the shadows away. There were shelves laden with books and scrolls, and in the middle of the room was a large map table of the surrounding lands. Sam trailed the flashlight along the wall to the right, pausing at a large family portrait over the mantelpiece. He recognized one of the four people as Judge Thomas Corvus, when he was young and probably yet unmarried. The others must be his parents and brother.

But then Sam's light caught on the edge of something else. He lowered it, and flinched at what was clearly a body under a sheet, sitting at a desk.

"This can't be good," said Dean blandly.

The brothers approached the desk, which was of oak, coated in a layer of dust. Beside unlit candles were glass orbs on stands, which would have amplified the candlelight after nightfall. And in the middle of the desk was a pair of balance scales, one dish weighed down with something dark, the size of a flip lighter.

Dean lifted the lantern. The bronze coating of the scales gleamed back. He peered closer at the object weighing one side down. Closer. Closer...

"Son of a bitch." He stepped back, lip curling.

"What?"

"It's a tongue. It's a goddamn tongue."

Sam shone his light on it. Indeed, a moist, freshly-severed tongue weighed down the right dish. Blood spattered the bronze, not yet congealed.

"Ew."

"What the hell does this even mean?" Dean gestured angrily at the display.

Sam shrugged, shining the light at the dusty, shrouded corpse sitting at the desk. The head was hanging low, as though the person had simply fallen asleep and forgot to wake up. There was no blood on it, no knife. But he had no doubt the tongue belonged to them.

"Hm." Sam put his finger on the other dish of the scale and tried to push it down. He frowned and put his whole hand on it, even leaning his weight to try and make the scales shift. Nothing.

"Damn thing's broken." Dean turned away to investigate the bookshelves.

Struck with a sudden idea, Sam pulled out the brick he'd taken from the wall of the well shaft in the cellar. So far it had been of no use, but maybe...

He set it on the left dish and released it, waiting for something to happen. It didn't. Releasing a sigh, he pulled the brick off and pocketed it again. Irritating as it was to hold onto, he felt that throwing it away now would be a mistake.

He turned to scout the rest of the room, only for something else to catch his eye.

In the opposite wall, near the corner, was a shadow that would not be chased away. It stretched from the floor to chest height, jagged around the edges, a couple feet at its widest point. Sam stepped closer. It was a hole.

"Hey. Check this out."

"Mm?"

He failed to notice that Dean didn't look away from the books lining the shelves. Sam squeezed through the hole, jacket catching on broken laths, plaster crumbling at his touch. It was tight but he got through, and he shone his flashlight about the new room.

It was small, with only a bed, footlocker and rocking chair, a few toys and clothes scattered about. A half-finished rug was on the floor, yarn and discarded needles left carelessly.

Sam tried to remember where he was in regards to the hallway. He'd passed the master bedroom and one more door before joining Dean in the office. So this was some kind of servant's room, likely that of a nursemaid.

Yes, there was a door that would lead to the nursery connected to the master bedroom, where Dean had nearly been hijacked by Ariel Corvus' ghost. From the nursery side, it was likely hidden, disguised as a bookshelf or the like. Rich people didn't like to be constantly reminded how much they relied on the services of others.

It was best he did not go there. Sam nearly turned away to return to the office when he noticed something on the wall beside the nursery door. A message, written in black. Sam stepped closer, squinting.

 _I love  
_ _the sound  
_ _of laughter_.

Sam blinked. Although the display was questionable, the message seemed harmless. But wait. What's that?

Moving closer and closer still, he realized the dark dot between _of_ and _laughter_ was a hole, the size of his thumbnail. Apprehensive, Sam put his eye to it, to view what lay beyond.

He nearly recoiled at the sight of a woman standing in the nursery, which was bright and clean and ready for a baby. Sam was looking into the past again, at what once was before madness struck. And there was Ariel Corvus, alive, and pregnant.

She was standing at the crib, staring down at it with a smile on her face. Silver-streaked, dark hair fell in ringlets about her face, and when she brushed one side behind her ear, Sam was able to see the laughter lines and crow's feet that creased her face. She was not young and pregnant with her fifth, who would be younger than her seven grandchildren. Although it was common practice at the time to marry and have children young, it was an unsettling thought for Sam. Especially because he knew the fate of this unborn child.

Ariel smiled to herself again, reaching into the crib as though to rearrange the blanket. She then set her hand on her swelling belly. She looked to be halfway along.

Another woman came into sight from the main room, red-haired with a black rose barrette. Although she wore the uniform of a maid, Sam recognized her as Angelina, Judge Thomas' secret lover. But...she also shared a remarkable resemblance to Ariel...

"Master Corvus wishes to see you, ma'am," said Angelina, curtsying to Ariel's back. She, too, had age lines and her curtsy was stiff.

"No, he doesn't," said Ariel, still smiling at the crib.

"...Begging your pardon, ma'am, but he does wish to speak with you."

"Oh? Concerning what?"

"It's not my place, ma'am."

"Tell me anyway."

Angelina's jaw jumped, nostrils narrowing. But her voice was silky smooth. "I believe it is estate affairs."

Ariel sighed, turning. As she did so, Sam caught a glimpse of her profile. They definitely looked related.

"I bore of such matters. Why didn't _you_ marry Thomas?"

Gone was the subservient demeanour. Angelina crossed her arms. "He fancied you more."

"Not since you flirted with him all those years ago. He looks at me but he imagines you."

"He fathered your children."

"Well he couldn't possibly father yours, could he?" Ariel touched her middle. "Kicking already. This one has spirit."

Angelina's nostrils narrowed again. "He's more safe in your womb than he'll ever be if we don't get out of here."

"Indeed." Ariel turned, looking down into the crib again. "But we can't. If we try, it'll kill us sooner."

"I have it locked away!" Angelina hissed. "It's at its weakest...Ariel, you must order an evacuation."

She tittered humorlessly. "And tell them what? That my prodigy sister, who happened to be the nursemaid for all my grandchildren, unleashed a demon to take vengeance on the house of Corvus? Are you mad?"

Sister? Demon? Sam pressed closer to the peep hole, ears straining to catch every word.

"You forget what Atticus did."

"Atticus is dead."

"But his lineage endures because you kept messing the bed sheets with his spawn!"

Ariel slapped her. Angelina's eyes were wide with shock but she did not touch her face.

"Angelina. Angelina, I'm sorry."

"If you were, you'd take your family – what's left of it – to safety." The red-head turned on her heel and left.

Sam thought the memory was over. So it came as a surprise to him when a small, familiar girl appeared, slipping through the door.

"What's wrong, grandmama?" asked Agnes, who almost looked...too curious. For whatever reason, Sam did not like her expression.

"Oh, nothing, my sweet. Are you feeling better?"

"Uh huh." Agnes climbed onto a chair and stood on it so she was as tall as her grandmother. "No nightmares this time. Angelina's magic worked."

"Oh, you know it's not _real_ magic, I hope."

"Nope! It is! I know it is. The one downstairs says it is."

Sam saw Ariel's shoulders stiffen. "What...? There's nothing down there, dear."

"Yes, there is! Angelina tried to tell me it's nothing, too. But I know she's lying. Gregory said it's God. Gregory's gone so I can't make him tell you."

"You think the Lord is in our cellar, honey pot?"

Agnes smiled, cheeks dimpling. "No, silly. God doesn't watch us anymore."

Ariel's hand went behind her back. In it she held some kind of charm Sam didn't recognize.

"Well you have a very good imagination. Just like your mother. She always loved telling stories."

In an instant, Agnes' smile was gone. "I'm not telling stories."

"Of...of course not, dear. Now why don't you run along now. I need to rest—"

"He said the babe has to go, now."

"...What?"

"He says it's the babe's turn."

Ariel, it seemed, had decided it was time to stop playing. "He's wrong. Don't listen to him, Agnes."

"I'm sorry, grandmama. But _she_ must be punished, and to punish her, you must feel pain." She didn't look like Agnes anymore. Her eyes were too cold. "It'll be over soon."

"No. No, you will release her, demon!" Ariel thrust the charm in front of her. But it did nothing. And she could not hurt anything without hurting her youngest grandchild.

Agnes cackled. She laughed harder when Ariel pulled out a flask emblazoned with a cross and threw its contents on her. The holy water had no effect.

"Please. Spare my son. Spare her." Ariel fell to her knees. She seemed unable to move, unable to defend herself. In the limited view Sam could only see part of the back of her head and shoulder on the other side of the crib. Agnes approached her, a straight razor appearing in her hand, before she knelt and was lost from sight.

The scream that followed burrowed deep into Sam's head, setting his nerves on fire. It was more than the screams of agony. It was the screams of a mother losing her child and being helpless to stop it. It made Sam sick and horrified and want to spring into action, even though there was nothing he could do.

And then his vision was filled with red as blood squirted through the spy hole and he yelled, clutching his eye. Staggering back, he rubbed it furiously, glaring at the wall. Blood pumped from the hole like a bullet wound. And, he was alarmed to see, the message written there had been changed with a single letter.

 _I love  
_ _the sound  
_ _of slaughter._

Sam spat out the blood that had squirted into his mouth, wiping his chin, smearing it everywhere. He couldn't get it off.

"Dean!"

It was then he saw something on the half-finished rug, which was saturated with scarlet. It looked like a small writhing lump of flesh. When he realized what it was, his stomach clenched.

"My God."

"Sam?"

What had been minutes for Sam was only seconds for Dean. He hadn't even noticed his brother was gone. But at the panic in his voice, Dean had clawed through the gap in the wall, recoiling at the sight of his brother, blood all down his front, smeared over his face.

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine. Dean. I saw what happened to Ariel's baby. Through..." He pointed at the wall, then froze. "Huh." His arm fell. "There was a hole here. It's gone now."

Dean stared at him, then at the wall, then at him again. "Right. Let's get outta here."

"Wait." Sam knelt before a small shifting mass Dean could barely differentiate from the unfinished rug in the middle of the floor. It was wet and raw looking, moving an arm-like appendage. And then Sam picked it up, and Dean recoiled, cursing.

"Don't touch it!"

Sam cupped the undeveloped fetus carefully in both hands. "It's a baby, Dean."

He cursed again. "Like hell it is!"

The lump of meat, coated in mucus and blood, writhed weakly in Sam's hands. It made no sounds but its fingers clenched into fists, and a black gash of a mouth opened as though to breathe. Its head was oversized and oblong, eyelids shut tight. The umbilical cord hung limply from its belly. He felt both revulsion and pity for the thing that should not be alive.

"Dude... Just...put it down."

"We can't leave it here, Dean."

"Sam. Listen to yourself. That thing isn't real. Okay? It died decades ago. You can't do anything for it."

"Then why is it here?"

"Because...because they're messing with your head."

Sam stared down at the unborn child. Viscous fluids, like bloody honey, seeped between his fingers, onto the floor.

"I'll put it in the crib."

"No, Sam."

He ignored Dean, making for the door connecting the nursemaid's room and the nursery. When he grabbed the knob, it burst like a bloated bloodbag. Dean cursed again.

"Dammit, Sam!" He wasn't about to fight his brother over a fetus. He grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him towards the hole in the wall, back to the office. Sam went willingly, trance-like, holding the coagulation of undeveloped mush like it was the most precious thing in the world. Dean didn't even want to look at it, and hoped Sam would snap out of it once they left the nursemaid's bedroom.

But he continued to cradle it in the middle of the office, uncaring of the smell or sticky sounds the fetus made as it moved.

"Are you going to tell me what happened or what?" Dean demanded, standing in front of his brother, arms crossed.

Sam gazed down at his burden, then at Dean's chest. No, he was looking _through_ Dean's chest, at what lay beyond.

"What now?" He turned around. There was only the desk, the balance scale and the mystery man beneath the sheet. "Dude, you're really freaking me out."

Without a word, Sam walked around him, each foot placed gingerly so as to not jostle the baby. He stopped in front of the desk, then carefully, carefully, set the fetus on the scale dish not weighed by the severed tongue. He stepped back. As Dean joined him, the scale slowly shifted its weight in favour of the unborn. But then, just as slowly, it shifted back, and the tongue remained the heavier.

"Is your word really worth more than life?" said Sam, deadpan.

Silence. Stillness. Finally the scales shifted again, and the tongue yielded to the fetus.

The figure beneath the shroud moved then, sitting up and setting something on the desk. The brothers recoiled but drew weapons for nothing. The figure sat back, returning to its original pose.

Sam and Dean did not relax for at least ten seconds after the room stilled. Dean approached the desk, carefully reaching around the scales to grab what had been set by the corpse. It looked like a snuffbox.

"What is it?" asked Sam.

Dean turned towards him and stopped short, as though seeing the state of his brother for the first time – covered in blood that clumped his hair into thick, tacky strands, gummed up his clothes and gave him a smell that would summon vampires from miles around. A smile split Dean's face, and he could not stop the chortle from bubbling out.

Sam scowled. "What?"

"You look like a friggin'—"

"If you say tampon, I swear to God, Dean..."

A full laugh escaped then, and it felt good to let it. Even Sam couldn't contain a smile after a few seconds, the sound contagious.

"Go screw yourself, man." Sam tried to wipe off some of the mess, an ultimately fruitless endeavour. "Are we done here?"

"You tell me." Dean nodded at the fetus on the scale, which had ceased to move. "You wanna keep playing Dada?"

Sam followed his gaze. A funny look came over his face, as though he'd just realized what he'd done. "Yeah, no. I'm good."

Dean pocketed the snuffbox he'd taken from the desk, left by the shrouded figure, and instead pulled out two small leather-bound journals differing only by the year stamped on their spines. "Good. Because I hit gold. Come on."

"You've got nothing on me, Dean. Wait until I tell you what I saw."

* * *

 **Credit to Silent Hill 2 for the line, "There was a hole here. It's gone now."**

 **I still don't know what it means.**


	28. Bile

**You aren't actually reading this today, are you? Look at the chapter title. Go back to your cookies.**

 **Just posting to say Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Solstice, New Year etc etc etc.**

 **:3**

* * *

 ***12:37***

* * *

~28~ Bile

"Goddamn horse."

Dean sensed Death's steed, which had followed them since their misadventure in the gallery, watching them as the brothers vacated the office and retreated to the foyer. There, the slowed grandfather clock ticked and tocked less than a quarter of its normal pace.

But even knowing they had over an hour left, seeing the minute hand inch ever closer to hour thirteen made Dean feel like he was at the precipice of a cliff, or poised at a starting line.

By Sam's antsy motions, Dean knew he was the same. So he played it cool, knowing that if he exposed his anxiety, it would make his brother feel worse.

He cleared his throat. "So, these books I found in there—"

"No, wait, Dean. There's something I gotta tell you first."

There was that imploring puppy look. Dean relented.

"Alright, alright, don't pee yourself. What did you see?"

Sam looked around, checking every corner, every shadow, and kept checking until Dean wanted to smack him.

" _What_ , Sam?"

"Shh! She might be listening."

"Who?"

"Agnes."

Dean blinked. "What?"

He moved closer, constantly looking around. Dean wrinkled his nose; he still smelled like he'd rolled on a butcher's floor.

"Agnes was the one who killed the unborn baby," said Sam. "She cut it right out of Ariel's body while she was still alive."

Dean stared. "I'm sorry. Agnes? Our one and only ally Agnes? But wasn't she, like, five when everyone died?"

"And that's not all. You remember Angelina from the music room? She danced with Judge Thomas, like she was his mistress or something. In the memory I saw, she was wearing a maid's uniform. I'd thought she dressed up for him when Ariel wasn't around. But get this – they were sisters."

Dean frowned. "Sisters? But..."

"What's more, Thomas was the only one out of the loop. Looks like Ariel and Angelina were playing with him, one pretending to have an affair with him and the other feigning ignorance."

"Okay. While I'm sure that's all important, what's that got to do with Agnes committing infanticide?"

"Ariel also mentioned a demon that had been released on the family," said Sam. "She didn't say its name, but we can definitely count on at least Angelina being a witch."

Dean bit his lip. "Her sister probably was too, then. So. Agnes was possessed—"

Sam was already shaking his head. He glanced about nervously again. "Ariel threw holy water on her. No effect at all. But she said something strange: _'She_ must be punished, and to punish her, you must feel pain.'"

"Who's she?"

Sam shrugged.

"Then she'd lost her marbles like everyone else," said Dean.

"But then how did she escape when no one else could...? Maybe the demon they mentioned was akin to the manifestations of the Seven Deadly Sins. You remember those guys. They didn't have to possess anyone to have control over them."

"Yeah, we ganked or exorcised all seven of their deadly asses. But they'd escaped hell only a few years ago so it can't be one of them," said Dean.

"I'm not saying it is. But if this thing _is_ a demon and it is one of their calibre, we can deal with it like any demon."

"Except you're forgetting one thing," said Dean. "We're stuck in a world made up of thoughts and memories. Even if we had the demon blade, we're hooped."

Sam pursed his lips. "Then we'll just have to avoid the damn thing until we figured out what happened to the family. Or why it happened. Then we can escape and hunt it in the real world."

"Right. That means finding out what the deal is with Angelina and Ariel. Sounds like there was some kind of long-ass conspiracy going on."

"Yeah. The sisters had something out for the Corvus family, and some guy called...Atticus."

Dean looked thoughtful, but with realization his face brightened. "Check this out." He pulled out two matching journals from the office. Stamped on the spine of one was 1822. The other was 1844, a red ribbon marking a page. "Found these suckers tucked behind the other books. Someone was definitely hiding something. All the entries were initialled with A.C. I'll bet that's this Atticus guy."

"So who's Atticus?"

"Don't recall seeing him on the family tree?"

Sam shrugged one shoulder. "I remember everyone from Ariel and Thomas down. None of their kids or grandkids were named Atticus. So maybe...Thomas' father?"

"That would make sense." Dean flipped through the journal with the ribbon, scanning pages at random. "Year of the first killings. It's all really boring. Statistics and financial notes. Looks like this Atticus was marking successes and mistakes in his lumber business."

"Lumber?" Sam frowned. The word struck a cord with him, and Dean fell silent, as though waiting for the note to finish singing. Suddenly Sam pulled another book out, this one smaller and much filthier. "The logbook I found in the servant's hall, after I got the gallows painting. I think it belonged to the ghost that was there. Everything about him said lumberjack."

"Hm. Well check this." Dean had stopped on the ribbon-marked page in the journal. "There's a footnote here that reads October 1822. That's it. That's why I grabbed this one too." He held up the second journal, then tipped his chin at the logbook. "What year's that?"

Sam opened it at random. "It's..."

Dean watched him stare at the book. "What? Forget how to read?"

Sam merely turned it towards him. Emblazoned across both pages was _October 17, 1822_. The lettering was a muddy brown colour. And he was sure it had not been there before.

"What the...?"

Sam turned a few pages. They all read the same. "But I know there were entries..." He flipped to the front. "January 1st, 1844. It goes to...March 18th of that same year. After that..." He shrugged. "October 17, 1822. Over and over... Man, these pages were blank earlier."

"Well. Then let's look at what Atticus had to say on the one and only ever October 17, 1822." Dean dropped the other journal on the stairs and cracked open the one of 1822. He turned to the tenth month, and then it was his turn to stare. Sam couldn't resist.

"Just sound the words out."

"Dude, the pages are gone."

"What?"

"Like, three of them. They've been torn out." He showed him, running a finger down the ragged edges close to the bindings, then he cursed and slapped the journal shut, sending a puff of dust into Sam's face.

"They could be anywhere!"

"Let's work with what we have," said Sam calmly. "We're missing just the one variable: October 17th, 1822." He held up the lumberjack's logbook. "This ends in 1844. The same year Tom Corvus was drowned by his father – the owner of this book – and his mother was thrown from her horse and died."

"Those three kids were poisoned that year, too. But what does it matter? We know that was when things got real bad for the family."

Sam scanned the last entry. "Well look here. Tom's dad seemed concerned about something when he wrote this. He was at a work camp. Speaks about people acting strangely, and he himself felt weird. Angry. Decided to skip lunch and catch a few Z's. Then, nothing."

Dean frowned thoughtfully. Then, on impulse, he snatched up Atticus' journal of 1844 from the stair and flipped to March. A piece of paper – aged and folded many times – fell to the floor. Picking it up, Sam then shone the flashlight on the book.

"Nothing. Nothing interesting. Dammit." Dean nodded at the folded piece of paper, a line creasing his brow. "Read that."

Sam unfolded it. "It's a newspaper article...Mysterious massacre of Kingsport timber worker camp...Fifty-six dead, fifty-seven workers." He tapped the third paragraph. "The only survivor was Gerald Hudson, son-in-law of Judge Thomas Corvus."

"Husband of Katrine, homicidal father of Tom," said Dean. "I think we found patient zero."

"Yeah. Look here," said Sam, scanning the article. "A supply cart was running late and arrived at the camp five hours after the main caravan... Uh, when it returned the caravan reported nothing unusual to Kingsport... By the time the late cart arrived at the camp, everyone had killed everyone else, in the strangest ways. Even the horses and oxen were slaughtered. They go into detail about it. One guy looked to have been quartered, but there were no rope marks on his limbs, just hand-shaped bruises. Another man was spitted over a fire. Two guys had entire branches shoved down their throats... Dude, lumberjacks were as tough as they come. A few random maniacs couldn't do this. Something supernatural definitely happened at this camp."

"And only Gerald escaped. But it was too late – he was already nuts."

"And he returned home and drowned his son in the pond," Sam finished, nodding.

"So maybe it was like...a demon disease or something. Gerald survived the camp and brought it back to the manor."

"I don't think so. Fifty-six people died at that camp in just a few hours. It took two years for the Corvuses and the staff to be killed off."

Dean scratched the back of his head. "Right. Then..." He froze, and at his look Sam whirled around to follow his gaze.

There was a maid, carrying a tea tray away from the kitchen and into the dining hall. She didn't look dangerous. She didn't even look insane.

"Hey!"

The brothers hastened down the corridor beneath the balcony, but she was gone before they got to the dining hall.

"You saw her too?"

"Yeah...Looked like she didn't know she was dead."

An awkward silence, in which Sam cleared his throat and Dean scuffed the floor. They didn't need to say it – their consciousnesses were becoming more in-tuned with the manor. They were dying.

"What did Atticus put on the desk in the office?" Sam suddenly asked.

Dean blinked, then reached into his pocket, pulling out a snuffbox. "This."

Sam frowned at it. "Have you opened it?"

In response, Dean cracked the lid off, exposing a small amount of powdered tobacco. "Up for some snuff?"

"Yuck." Sam took it and poked around inside. He felt something cold and stiff hidden beneath the powder. He pulled out what looked like a tiny crank, like the starter handles used to fire up old automobiles, but smaller than his finger. He frowned.

"What's this for?"

"A wee jack-in-the-box," said Dean flatly.

Sam sighed, pocketing the mini crank. "Guess we gotta check the rooms again. Maybe one unlocked itself."

The brothers turned as one back towards the foyer, only to flinch.

Death's horse stood between them and their destination. They had not heard it approach and it did nothing but stare at them.

Sam looked around. To their right were the doors to the cellar, kitchen and pantry. Dead ends. Literally. To their left, at the other end of the dining hall, was a door that likely led to the parlour. It was a way around the undead animal but an unfavourable one at that.

Dean, meanwhile, tried to stare down Death's horse. It didn't so much as blink.

"That rhyme in the gallery. How did it go again?"

Sam looked at him, a line on his brow. "Um...Find the missing paintings three; the steed of Death, the hanging tree, the valkyries over hills of blue. Together, reveal the way for you."

"Right. _Together_ , reveal the way. The dead guy and the bird things got us the wax doll for ol' Bede in the attic. But my little pony here has done nothing but follow us around. Kinda like its master."

Sam grimaced. "Yeah, yeah, the symbolism is nauseatingly obvious. We need a way around."

Dean wasn't listening. _We've always run away from death. But where's_ not _running from it gotten us?_ He snorted to himself. _Dead. That's where it's gotten us._

Still, he approached the white stallion, its orb-like eyes seeming to be riveted on him.

"Dean! What are you _doing?_ "

"Running away has never gotten us further from it. Going towards it has always gotten us somewhere new."

"Dude!"

Dean ignored his protests, reaching with one hand towards the animal. It didn't so much as blink, until Dean's hand pressed against its brow between its eyes. It closed them, releasing a low, horsey rumble.

He saw its middle convulse and instinctively jumped back. And just in time. The beast lowered its head and opened its mouth wide, disgorging the contents of its innards violently. Dean covered his nose in revulsion as the horse heaved and heaved again, bulges in its neck revealing the size of those contents before they splattered all over the floor. And with every projection, its stomach got smaller.

Sam cursed. "Is that...a leg?"

Dean forced himself to look at the vomit. Indeed, it was parts and organs of a human body the horse was upchucking. There was a foot. A thigh. Half a liver. Even now a spine was sliding out of the beast's gullet, followed by a head still attached to the vertebrae. The animal coughed and several ribs spewed forth with slabs of bloodied skin.

Eventually the whole of a young boy – from bones to organs to flesh – lay in a mess on the floor. The horse wavered, head drooped. Its middle was now emaciated, just ribs and spine and pelvis, as though it had no innards. But it had one last present, and it convulsed several times, like a cat bringing up a hairball. At last a silver necklace dropped from its mouth, on top of the pile of human slushie.

Then the beast collapsed sideways onto the floor, where it shuddered several times before falling still.

Sam closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'd rather eat more worms than see that again."

Dean stared at the charm sitting on top of the pile. It was a semicircle with a triangle indentation. "What do you suppose that's for?"

"Dunno."

"Grab it."

Sam frowned. " _You_ grab it. I had to hold the fetus."

Dean pursed his lips but relented, grimacing as he approached the heap. Impulsively, he nudged the head over, revealing a half-digested face. "Uuugh."

"What?"

"It's the thief. The kid who stole the paintings and tried to escape."

Even if the head didn't have _thief_ carved into its forehead, he recognized him from the vision the painting had showed them after they replaced it in the gallery. The boy had run across the pasture, away from Corvus Manor, two paintings under one arm. He'd tried and failed to climb over the wall, and then the white horse approached him as he lied on the ground. The last thing the Winchesters heard before the vision ended was a horrible scream.

"Even the animals weren't spared from whatever scrambled these guys' brains."

Sam cursed under his breath as Dean nudged the face away from him and picked up the charm with just his thumb and forefinger. He took it over to the dining room table – Sam hastily standing aside in case Dean was planning any funny business – and used the napkins there to wipe away the blood and slime.

"Yeeach." He got most of it off, then brought the lantern closer. Sam looked at it over his shoulder.

"What are we supposed to do with this?"

Dean shook his head, morose. These riddles were too tiring. It seemed like so much was being done for too little reward.

Sam was silent for several seconds until he noticed his brother's despair. "There's still time. We've learned something from these journals. We're getting somewhere, Dean. We just have to find those missing pages in Atticus' journal."

"What if he destroyed them before kicking the bucket?"

"Why bother writing it down at all if he thought it would lead to harm? Whatever it is, it was important to remember as well as keep hidden."

Try as he might, Dean couldn't disagree with Sam's logic. "Well where would you hide a bunch of papers?"

"Where do you hide a tree?"

Grimacing, Dean said, "You want us to comb the library again?"

"...Probably not. There'll be another stash of books somewhere...Although we can't expect a crazy ghost to hide something somewhere rational, can we?"

"Unless Atticus was alive at the time."

Sam rubbed his face with both hands. This was proving to be the longest damn night of his life.

"Let's just start looking. We're getting close. I can feel it."


	29. Conservatory

***12:38***

* * *

~29~ Conservatory

The brothers stepped around the heap of human casserole and the emaciated horse corpse in the corridor, back to the foyer. They both looked at the grandfather clock.

"Bit over an hour left," said Sam softly. "Maybe."

"Can't make it any slower?"

"Tried. It's resisting."

Dean sighed through his nose. "If only we'd been able to contact Lilly and Garth sooner..."

Sam pulled out the walkie-talkie, left on the same station with which they'd spoken with the real world last time. But he only got static. "If we could just tell Garth it's some kind of demon holed out here."

Snorting, Dean said, "If, if, if. There are a lot of if's and it's not like they can do squat."

Sam nodded curtly, then led the way back to the third floor.

As it had the last few times they'd been there, it was normal looking, not the narrow-walled labyrinth with the useless rooms and mutilated monsters it appeared as during their first visit. But always in the back of his head, Sam kept in mind the strange door etched with Cherokee symbols, which they hadn't been able to open. They hadn't seen it since, and worried there was some vital clue they had missed.

"Sam. _Sam_."

He jolted. "What?"

"Which way?"

From the top of the stairs, the brothers looked left, then right. Sam jerked his thumb towards the east wing.

"Left."

Dean nodded and took the lead, raising the lantern.

They checked doors as they passed, setting their feet down as quietly as possible. The hall seemed to be longer than it was before, and more dismal, as though fifty years had passed since they last came this way.

"Stop breathing so loud," Dean hissed over his shoulder.

Sam blinked. "I thought that was you."

They stilled. There was definitely the sounds of another's breathing, hovering about them. Dean's hand tightened around the shotgun.

"Keep moving."

At Sam's order, Dean's feet obeyed, but his ears strained to keep track of the background breathing he swore was right behind him.

The next time Dean stopped, Sam scowled.

"What now?" He stepped out from behind him, clicking on his flashlight. The extended glow picked up nothing. Frowning, he looked at Dean, and was surprised to see his eyes were closed.

"Smell that?" Dean sniffed gently, as though not wanting to get used to the scent before he could identify it.

Frowning, Sam sniffed as well.

"It's...earthy."

Dean started forward, pausing near doors in the attempt to pin down the scent. He kept his eyes closed, trusting Sam to keep a lookout. When the smell was at its strongest, he opened his eyes. He was at a set of double doors, which he couldn't recall seeing before. One of them was cracked open.

"It's coming from there."

Before Sam could slip ahead, Dean opened the door further and stepped through. The smell was much stronger now. Damp earth and vegetation.

It was a short, wide corridor, and at the other end was a shapeless mass difficult to discern. Dean stepped closer, then recoiled, backing into his brother.

"What the hell is that?"

Heart jolting, Sam shone the flashlight at the dark mass. At first he thought it was a tangle of Creepers – what the brothers had dubbed the moving roots they had encountered in the cellar – but then he relaxed.

"They're just plants."

Indeed, it was a mess of vines and leaves and flowers that had somehow grown between the door and the frame, spilling into the corridor. They weren't moving and they didn't reek or seep rancid juices.

Crossing the short hall, Dean seized hold of the door knob, keeping an eye on the vines. He turned it and tugged. The door moved a couple inches before jamming.

"Dammit." He tried to hack the plants away by jerking the door against them as Sam took to them with his knife, and eventually they cleared enough away to squeeze into the room beyond.

It was a jungle. Longer than it was wide, the chamber was two stories tall, the ceiling and far wall constructed of panelled windows, the ever present fog swirling beyond. The glow was dimmed by the foliage creeping up the glass, seeking the sun that wasn't there. But the brothers' lights were enough to illuminate the hundreds of plants that filled the room.

There were numerous small trees, potted ferns and shrubs, and walls of vines. Flowers from all over the world each released a unique scent that mingled with damp soil. Every plant was in various states of decay, some looking to be fresh and alive while others had withered, brittle and yellow.

Adding to the jungle look were the posed skeletons of animals. Birds, deer, a couple wolves. Someone had a strange definition of conservation.

"This must be the room Tyson spoke of," said Sam, shining the light around. There seemed to be no danger, but there were a lot of shadows.

"Said he and his friends were trying to get something locked in here," Dean added. He, too, chased what darkness he could away, watching his every step. He glared at a skeleton of an owl trapped in mid-flight.

"A book of some kind." Sam moved towards the wall on the left, which was lined with bookshelves stretching higher than he could reach. He stumbled over broken floor tiles, and when he regained his balance, the beam of his flashlight landed on a face. He recoiled.

"Hey, Dean?"

As his brother hastened over, Sam stepped closer to a man who had been cocooned in ivy, held upright against the wall. His first impulse was to check for life, but in this place, it seemed ridiculous.

"I'll bet this is Dave. George's second friend."

What clothing poked through the tangle of vines looked modern, and he had a skull-shaped earring. Dean leaned in closer.

"Why isn't he moving?" he said.

Sam shrugged, then tapped the man on the cheek. No response.

"Let's cut him down."

"Um...maybe we shouldn't do too much damage to the plants. Just in case."

"...Good call."

Starting at his feet, they untangled and pulled the vines away until they could tug him free, lying him on the floor. There were still no signs of life.

"Well we can't take him with us like this," said Dean. "Let's keep looking."

It wasn't long before they each came across a clue, nearly at the same time.

"I got something," said Dean, gazing down. Flush with the floor was a circular window over a shallow pit. There was a book with a cover of animal pelt lying at the bottom, and scattered around it were a few loose papers. It was too dark to read them.

"Me too," said Sam, trying not to sound excited. Pinned to the wall over a fireplace was a parchment with some kind of poem. He plucked it off before heading towards his brother.

"Figure this was what George and his friends were trying to get?" Dean knelt, touching an indentation near one side of the floor window. It was circular, about two inches wide, with an etching of two triangles touching at one corner, similar to the symbol of eternity.

"Yeah," said Sam.

Dean paused, then pulled out the little charm Death's horse had so thoughtfully coughed up for them. It was a half circle inscribed with a triangle. On the flat edge was a slot.

"We need to find the second half," said Dean. He slumped. The tiny thing could be anywhere.

"Maybe this will help." Sam knelt beside him, using the combined light to read the parchment's scribbles. "Check this out."

 _Dark have been the days, when kings sat upon thrones of hate._

 _They stood upon the mighty fir and reached into air._

 _The stars they stole, now suffer the taste of stone._

 _Alas, the poor give alms and the haves not but fear_

 _The word, rise and fall as the sword doth shine._

 _Still rose a mast in the fetid wastes of the east_

 _And the nest of crows calls to the west._

 _Save those who have not sorrow,_

 _A fiend, whose heart loathes the friend_

 _Of the wise, and heeds the wills of the wisp._

 _From womb to tomb, larks carry the tune_

 _'Neath thunder head and o'er herd of harts,_

 _While devils dine and toss the dice of fortune._

 _But from dead trees hang the veil of maiden's forgotten hand,_

 _In lands of milk and honey and daggers honed._

 _And were the days not long gone where a knight rode_

 _Tall, and wrote a tale both bold and brave_

 _In the sand, where 'tis said_

 _The lord of the maze rests his mace of bone._

The brothers stared at the riddle, then at each other.

"You understand all that?"

Sam shook his head. "I...I don't..." He looked at the parchment again. Beneath the riddle were a few unfinished sentences, with dashes indicating the letters of the missing words. Four boxes, one atop the other, revealed a relationship between the missing words. A few of the lines had letters already in place.

"I am something, the shepherd of the something, the something in this something," said Sam. "Okay. So we need to fill in the blanks."

Dean turned the paper over. "There aren't any letters to fill the blanks with. They must be in the riddle."

"Alright." Sam stood and wandered over to the fireplace, where he grabbed a piece of charcoal before returning to his brother, kneeling on the floor. "The answer's here. We can do this."

* * *

 **So, smart bored people. I have made an image of the parchment Sam found with the riddle and cipher and put it on DeviantArt just because it was easier and less clumsy than trying to explain in full what it looked like. Check it out if you wish. It gives you a chance to try and figure it out on your own. Can you do it before they do (that is, before you read the next chapter)?**

 **I can't post a link but my DeviantArt username is MerlynPyndragon and the title is Cipher of Corvus Manor. It'll be in the "Scraps," in the Gallery tab. Or it might be under my profile. Good luck.**


	30. Spawn

**Did you even try to figure it out? ;)**

 **I like riddles. Shush.**

* * *

 ***12:40***

* * *

~30~ Spawn

The brothers thought on their own and together, pointing out both the obscure and the obvious to try and jog some ideas of what the riddle meant.

"I don't think it _means_ anything," said Sam. "It doesn't...go anywhere."

"So whatever's _in_ the riddle doesn't matter." Dean scratched out one of his ideas, in which he had begun writing down the nouns that stood out: king, knight, lark, mace, devils, maiden...

"No, but the letters do." Sam pointed to Dean's list. "K, L, M, D, another M... No, I guess not. No vowels."

"There are vowels already in place," said Dean, nodding at the cipher at the bottom.

"Not enough."

"Hmph. What about this?" He tapped the last line. "The lord of the maze. That's gotta be the Minotaur."

"But that seems to be it for any reference to Greek mythology. Here they mention a nest of crows."

"Yeah, as in crow's nest. Goes with mast in the line before it. So, a ship going west? From the fetid wastes of the east. Wherever that is."

"There's also the land of milk and honey here." Sam pointed. "Canaan. And at the beginning they mention kings...but ones that harbour hatred..."

Dean chewed his lip. "Let's try something else. Some lines have words beginning with the same letters..."

And on and on it went. They tried alliteration, word matching and scrambling, rhyming, and searching for synonyms. They sought lines within the lines by skipping every other word and delved into every past civilization they could think of. Nothing was working. And time was running short.

"The number of lines matches the missing letters in the cipher," Dean pointed out. Sam blinked.

"You're right. So maybe..."

He compiled a list of the first letter of each line while Dean did the last letter, and they tried to fill in the spots with what words they found.

Sam frowned at his list. Saint, stain and waist were the only words long enough, and they didn't fit. "What you got?"

Dean snorted. "Seed, deed, pest, rest...Not enough variation of letters. I don't know, man, maybe we're thinking wrong. Still." He went to scratch out the list when Sam suddenly grabbed his arm.

"Dude..."

"What?"

"...That's it, Dean."

" _What?_ "

Instead of answering, Sam began to circle two words in every line, ignoring his brother, letting him figure it out. When he did, he scoffed.

"Son of a gun."

"Word, sword. Alas, alms. Fiend, friend. One letter makes an entirely different word," said Sam.

"Mast, east. Honey, honed." Dean shook his head. "That's gotta be it. But which letter do you choose?"

"I'm guessing the second. That's what it's changing to, left to right." Sam dashed them down, frowning at the lack of space left on the parchment. He sharpened the charcoal stick on the floor, and together the brothers pulled out the words hidden in the letters.

"Demon," said Dean, gesturing quickly. "First word is demon."

Sam didn't argue, writing the word on the first line in the cipher and crossing the used letters off in the list. "Okay. I am the demon, the shepherd of the something, the something in this something... Beast." He saw it easily with the other letters scribbled off. He wrote it on the third line.

"Cipher," Dean responded, taut with anticipation. "The beast in this cipher."

"Of course." Sam wrote the word on the fourth row. "Now. I am the demon, the shepherd of the...what?"

T, W, D, C, H, R. Two E's were already in place by whoever had written the nonsense riddle. The brother's felt the competitive tension between them, which was as much a hindrance as it was a drive. And then, finally, Sam tied it by crying, "Wretched!"

He wrote it down and tossed the charcoal aside. The pair sat up, releasing sighs of relief which morphed into groans as they realized how long they'd been kneeling on the cold stone floor of the conservatory.

"Ow," said Dean, sitting on his rear and stretching his legs.

Sam barely gave himself a moment's reprieve, snatching up the parchment. Four rows of words, including the ones they had riddled out, ran left to right. But four letters, one from each unscrambled word, had been written in four boxes set one over the other. Over the top box it read _I am_ a second time.

"I am the demon, the shepherd of the wretched, the beast in this cipher. I am..." He trailed off, frowning at the name formed in the four boxes. Dean read it over his shoulder, and then they shared a look.

"Who the hell is Ewah?"

A ragged gasp filled withered lungs, and the brothers jumped like cats, turning and drawing weapons. The man they had pulled from the vines bolted up, eyes wild in the light.

"NO! You mustn't say its name!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, take it easy, hotshot." Dean held out a pacifying hand.

"It's coming! You have to run!"

"What's coming?" asked Sam, hand tightening around his knife. "Hey!"

The man, believed to be George's friend Dave, was already fleeing, although he staggered like a drunk, making for the door. As Sam went to follow, Dean threw out an arm, catching him in the chest.

"I'll get him. You get that book!" He raced out the door after Dave, lantern light quickly fading.

Sam turned to the circular window set in the floor, below which was a single book as well as several loose papers. There was an indentation beside the glass, a circle etched with two triangles touching at one corner. Looking at it sideways, it might have been a simplified sand glass.

They had half of a necklace, which would fit in that indentation. He just had to find the second half, fast.

He snatched up the parchment with the riddle and cipher. "So why were you here?"

Something scratched, like steel on stone. Sam leaped to his feet, flashlight whipping across the conservatory. Nothing stirred.

But there was something in the middle of the floor between him and the far windows, which emitted the foggy haze through fans of ivy. It was a small wooden box, and it definitely had not been there before.

Sam approached it slowly, shining the flashlight into every shadow cast by the jungle around him. He froze at the sight of the skeleton of a large feline poised behind potted ferns. It was smaller than a cougar but larger than a lynx, jaws gaping, eye sockets glaring, ready to pounce. Sam shook his head with a snort before returning his attention to the mystery box.

He knelt before it, lifting the lid and shining the light inside.

It was a music box. There was a stout metal cylinder covered in pins all along its length, ready to pluck at the fingers of the steel comb and play a song. Sam felt the sides and bottom, searching for the crank that would wind it up.

He didn't find it. Instead his questing fingers found a square hole on the side.

Bingo.

Patting himself down, he eventually found the tiny crank taken from Atticus' snuffbox. One end fit perfectly into the square hole, and he turned the handle gently several rotations before releasing it.

The tune was both unfamiliar and haunting. He couldn't stop staring at the cylindrical drum as it slowly turned, the pins catching the comb tines over and over. It was mesmerizing, and he was almost disappointed when it stopped. And then there was a sharp click and a compartment opened in the bottom of the lid. Out tumbled a silver semicircle inscribed with a triangle. The second half of the necklace.

Picking it up, Sam gave it a quick sleeve polish before taking the other half and fitting them together, forming a silver disk etched with two touching triangles, just like the indentation in the floor. With it, he should be able to get the book and pages.

Scritch, scratch. Sam whirled around, fumbling the flashlight. The orb of light whipped about before he steadied it. As before, nothing.

He scoffed at himself as he made for the book, shining the light towards his destination.

 _The book. Just get the book and get out._

He was five paces away from the indentation in the floor. Four. Three. Two.

Scratch, scritch. Sam spun around again, only this time, he saw a sight that squeezed his chest and stopped his heart but for a moment.

A figure stood before the windows, back-lit, over eight feet tall and lanky. Its head was bowed, hands at its sides. But they weren't really hands. Each arm ended with a pair of long, motionless, root-like appendages. He heard a croaking sound, a cross between a bullfrog and a squeaky floorboard.

Sam took a step back. His foot nudged something, and he knew what it was instantly.

 _Thank you, Dean!_ Sam tucked and turned, scooping up the shotgun in one smooth motion. He was already aiming it towards the windows when he came to a stop, battle-face in place.

Gone. The figure was gone.

Although he loathed to take a hand off the shotgun, he had to in order to pick up the flashlight again and shine it around. His eyes were wide and soaked up every detail, and he remained there, ears straining, for almost a minute before dropping both gun and light and setting the necklace pendant into the indentation in the floor. Then, for lack of knowing what to do, he pressed on it has hard as he could.

The circular window shattered, chunks half an inch thick falling around the book and pages. Sam fished them out and tossed them aside, grabbing the papers one by one. A quick check revealed them to be the missing pages from Atticus Corvus' journal. With them, he might discover what happened in the year of 1822, over two decades before the madness of Corvus Manor began. Why those pages had been ripped from Atticus' journal but not destroyed was a point of intrigue, and would perhaps shed some light on the events of 1844.

Then there was only the book. It was pinned beneath a large chunk of glass that had spiderwebbed but not smashed apart. Sam took off his jacket and, after removing the walkie-talkie and the well brick* from his pockets, wrapped it around his hands before lying on his belly. He grabbed hold of one side of the glass chunk and lifted it up. Bracing it with his left arm, he reached down with his right, going for the tome.

But something was watching him. Had been watching him, and his brother, since it hatched inside the eye socket of the brother and escaped through a hole in the wall. Its twin had died within moments of hatching. Crushed, stamped on. But it didn't need its twin. It had been insurance, a second chance, nothing more.

Decades had passed since it was last that weak and small, but the power it had gathered and coveted for over a century in the Collective Unconscious allowed it to quickly grow and form a new body. If one could call it a body.

It knew what the men were up to. Like so many others, they followed the clues left by the Corvus dead, which the thing called Ewah simply could not eradicate from its creation. It could only set up obstacles, dangers, and for most who came here, it was enough to slow them and thus trap them here forever. But these two. These two had gotten further than anyone. They even destroyed Ewah's old body in the cellar. They were too insightful. Too courageous. But they were also damned.

Separated, they were weaker, it knew. More vulnerable. It had been waiting for this moment. It could not kill him – one cannot die here – but it could debilitate him enough that he would not be able to continue. His time would run out and his lifesource would strengthen the demon that was Ewah even more.

It had already startled the man with one of the many forms it could take. His fear – a potent, primitive emotion – fuelled the very walls around him, hardened the fabrications of the manor. And now it would show the man his place in this realm.

Sam snatched up the tome and let the chunk of glass fall before pushing himself up on his knees, looking the book over. Its cover was of animal skin and it was bound with twine. He didn't recognize the text stamped on the cover, and so it was with foreboding he cracked it open. If he couldn't read it...

Blank pages stared back at him. And then they disintegrated, the whole book becoming ash in his hands. Aghast, he let the dust slip between his fingers.

What the hell was this? A decoy?

Sam stiffened. He could tell something was out there, somewhere in the dark. He could smell it. The putrid stench of still water and rotting vegetation. He wanted to look, but knew it could be a fatal mistake.

 _In the basement's basement, terrors creep. Meet not his eye for your mind to keep_.

Agnes' warning. Well, the terror wasn't in the basement anymore.

His hand closed around the shotgun, eyes on his knees. He was going to have to use his other senses to locate the monster and get out of the room. Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet, the ring of the flashlight at his side like a faithful dog. Just over there was his jacket, walkie-talkie and the brick. He shifted his weight to his left leg in preparation of stepping with his right—

 _Sssshlop._ Splat.

He didn't want to turn around. But he had to know what hit the floor behind him. Already grimacing, he turned, aiming the light to the black puddle of goop spattered over the stone tiles. It glistened wetly, and it moved, as though a snake writhed within.

More dripped from above, the blobs smaller but equally smelly, landing all around. Sam looked up. The flashlight was too weak to reach the ceiling. But it did catch the mass falling towards him, and he was too slow to dodge before it landed on his head, latching itself to his face like a giant insect.

He tried to scream but it had completely blocked off his airways with its warm, amorphous body. Needle claws dug into his skin along his jaw and behind his ears and he immediately thought of Facehuggers from _Alien_. He clamped his teeth shut as hard as he could, twisting this way and that as he gripped the thing with both hands and tried to pull it off his head. Blind, he stepped on the flashlight and fell hard, cracking his skull on the floor.

He couldn't breathe. The thing was as slimy as a slug and he could barely get a grip on it. More blobs landed on him, latched to him, and where they did he felt ring-shaped burns through his clothes and into his skin, like they were biting him with circular mouths. Like they were _feeding_ on him.

 _No!_

Chest bucking with the need for air, Sam tried to dig his fingers under the monster's claws to pry them away. In response, worm-like tendrils began to wriggled into his ears and up his nose, pushing through his pursed lips and questing around his teeth. Worst of all, they pressed against his eyelids, and he thought of Dean, how something had sucked out his eyes before he had a chance to scream. If he even could've screamed.

The thought of suffering the same fate gave Sam the last ounce of determination he needed. He gripped the thing with the strength to squeeze a rock to powder, until his fingers broke through the monster's membranous skin and into its hot innards. It squealed as he drew it off his face, claws raking his cheeks. It hurt like hell but the air that filled his lungs was sweet, even if it did reek of decay. Strings of mucus trailed between his face and underbelly of the monster.

 _Gross!_

Sitting up, Sam pulled the thing away as well as leaned back, until it could no longer hold on. The tendrils withdrew from his nose, mouth and ears, the feeling alone enough to make him gag. And then the thing just squirmed in his grip, allowing him to get a better look at it in the dim light.

It didn't look like anything, shaped like a giant, oblong pancake rimmed with tiny claws and squirming with black red tendrils. Hot slime dripped down his hands, into his sleeves, from the punctures his fingers had made in its body.

He didn't see its stingray tail until it began whipping about, and by then he was too slow to cast the monster away before it lashed towards him, barbed tip piercing his chest, just below the collarbone.

Icy venom began to spread as he froze, shocked, but then he grabbed the stinger and yanked it out of his skin, hurling the monster across the room. It squealed as it disappeared into the darkness, and Sam got to his feet, swatting at the other blobs that had attached themselves to his body. They fell away, writhing on the floor, some carelessly trod upon as Sam fought to get them all off.

When he was clear, he took a moment to simply stand there and shudder, feeling more violated than he ever had in his life. And that was saying something.

He could hear the thing, circling around him, little claws pitter-pattering like the legs of a millipede. It shot past the beam of the flashlight, lying a few feet away on the floor. Closer was the shotgun, and he scooped it up, smearing mucus from his eyes as he rested the butt of the weapon against his shoulder. He turned his head to follow the monster's sounds. It was like it knew he was armed and sought an opening.

An opening that would soon present itself, once its venom began to shut down Sam's system.

He felt it in his upper chest first, where he'd been stung. A numbing that weakened and stiffened the muscles, which spread to his neck until he couldn't turn his head. His thoughts became mushy, eyelids heavy with fatigue. The shotgun became a bazooka, too heavy to hold out in front of him, and every bone in his body felt like a thousand pounds.

The monster crept closer.

Something else, something big, rammed into the back of his knees and he fell, the shotgun going off, blasting a nearby sapling into splinters. He rolled over sluggishly, getting to his hands and knees, only for whatever had knocked him over to pounce, claws digging into his back.

He cried out and swung an elbow back, feeling it contact what felt like teeth. It snarled. Whatever it was, it wasn't the Facehugger.

Sam elbowed it again, harder, and it let go with a feline hiss. Without turning to see what it was, he lurched towards where his jacket lay.

He knew the monster was coming at him again. But just within reach was the brick he had taken from the well shaft in the cellar. So far it had been of no use. But at that moment he was glad he'd lugged it around.

Sam seized hold of it and twisted around just in time to smash it against the monster's head. It yowled, staggering back several paces. Half of its face was crunched in and its jaw hung on by only one side. In the dim light, the thing looked like how he imagined hellhounds to appear – with the skull of a dog, eyeless, noseless, every tooth exposed, no fur but with taut black skin stretched over bone. But then the thing retreated into the dark, away from the windows, away from the flashlight.

"Sam?"

He perked. "Dean!"

The elder brother appeared in the doorway, standing in the orb of light from his lantern.

"I heard a shot! Are you okay? What happened?"

Sam grabbed his jacket and pulled it on, smothering the weariness, and scooped up the walkie-talkie and flashlight. He couldn't see the brick anywhere.

"Monster!"

Halfway to his brother, Dean slid to a stop and took a defensive stance, drawing the cleaver from his waistband. He turned about.

"Where?"

"It ran off. Dean, the book was a fake." On his hands and knees, Sam picked up the journal pages before getting up, as steady as he could manage. "It turned to ashes in my hands."

"So this whole thing was a trap?"

"No. The pages from Atticus' journal are real. We just— _augh_."

"Sam?" Dean hastened over, no longer just seeing an outline of his brother against the foggy light outside. He looked deathly pale, ready to upchuck. "Sam!"

"I'm fine! We gotta get out of here." Sam kept glancing towards the windows, as though expecting something to be there. As his head turned away, Dean could see dark veins creeping up his neck from a point below his collar, and he could smell rotting garbage.

"Dude—"

"Talk later." Sam barely had time to snatch the shotgun up before Dean grabbed his shoulder and guided him towards the door.

Both heard the scratching of nails and both tried to shove his brother out of the way. Dean won, and Sam staggered out of the line of fire while Dean turned to meet the threat.

Whatever it was, it had teeth and it had claws. It latched onto Dean even as he swung the cleaver into its side. Blade chopped the monster's flesh and bone, claws punctured Dean's chest. He twisted around, throwing it off, only to slip in monster blood and hit the floor. The lantern smashed on the tiles, oil and glass exploding everywhere.

Dean cursed but there was no time to bemoan the loss. He got up as the fire spread across the spilled oil, expanding the bubble of light. He reached for Sam.

"Come on!"

"It's not dead."

"I gutted the damn thing—"

"Look out!"

Dean released him in favour of catching the dog-like monster in midair, grabbing it by the front legs. It snapped at him with long canines. Its rear feet kicked and clawed, aggravating its wounds and squirting slime everywhere. It was hot and putrid and it was all Dean could do to not gag.

"Down, boy." He tossed the creature into the puddle of burning oil, and it erupted in flames. It howled as it thrashed, spreading the oil further, batting the flames higher. And with a final, blazing inferno, the demon spawn disappeared.

"Hurry." Sam groaned, sagging with fatigue. "There might be more of those things."

As the pair hobbled from the room, something watched them from the dark, smiling.

* * *

 ***Chapter 20: Depths**

 **It's been a while.**


	31. Extraction

**I'm gonna regret posting this now but I am so done with this. Are you done with this? I'm done with this.**

 **Not too much longer now.**

* * *

 ***12:43***

* * *

~31~ Extraction

Regretfully leaving the remains of the lantern behind, Dean supported his brother out of the conservatory and back to the hall of the third floor. But instead of turning right and going to their usual recovery point, the foyer, he turned left, making for the gallery.

Sam made a questioning sound but Dean said nothing until they reached the double doors.

"Dave! Dave, we're coming in. Get away from the door. We're armed." He waited five seconds, then pulled a busted table leg out of the twin loops of the handles, used to brace the doors shut, and entered the gallery.

He closed the doors again, and Sam leaned heavily against them before sliding down on his rear. Dean let him, as it kept him upright and provided an obstacle for his "prisoner."

"Stay over there," he ordered Dave, indicating he remain in the middle of the chamber, away from the marble pillars, where it was brightest.

"Just let me go. Please. I have to find my friends."

"They could be anywhere. And I need you to answer some questions." Dean turned his focus to his brother, who was behaving like he'd been hit with a tranquilizer dart. The source seemed to be originating from a wound on his chest. "Let me see."

Sam hunched away from him. "It's nothing."

Dean drew Sam's hand away from his chest and pulled down his shirt collar. Pus oozed out of the swollen puncture below his right clavicle, along with black mucus he didn't want to identify. It looked like a fist-sized bee had stung him.

"'Zit bad, Doc?" Sam slurred.

"...Mosquito bite." Although he longed to colourfully curse himself having left his brother alone, Dean decided now wasn't the best time.

"You gonna tell me what happened?"

As briefly as he could, Sam recounted what had happened to him in the conservatory after Dean left to pursue Dave; the "facehugger" that nearly suffocated him, burrowing into his head and attempting to take his eyes.

Dean didn't need to know the details. The very same thing had happened to him a few hours before, but he hadn't been successful in ripping the thing off his face before it plucked out his peepers and laid parasites in his head. Speaking of which...

"Sam, I hate to tell you this, but..."

"What?"

"The bump. It's moving."

"...Get it out."

Dean grimaced. "You've got to be—"

"I can feel it, Dean. Get it out." Sam felt for his knife, finding it at his belt.

"It'll get out on its own," said Dean.

"If you don't do it, I will." He held the blade over the bump, but it wavered, as though he were holding a broadsword instead of a hunting knife. He was getting weaker.

"Fine. Gimme that." He took the blade and pulled Sam more upright, unbuttoning the top of his shirt to expose the weeping bulge. He held the knife up to it, angled one way, then another, then shifted his feet in a different position and went through the sequence again.

"Sometime today would be nice, Dean."

"It's an art, not a science."

"Remember when I had to dig that bullet out of your back?"

"This is not the same."

"Course not. You're doing the digging this time."

"Shut up." He took a deep breath, planning his attack. The parasite wasn't deep, just under the skin, about the size of a walnut. He would make an X, like one would on a snake bite, and pop the little sucker like a pimple.

He set the edge of the blade against the swollen lump and Sam flinched. Dean pulled it away.

"Did that hurt?"

"Just do it, you wuss."

Scowling, Dean shifted again, once more setting the knife edge diagonally on the bump. This time, Sam didn't flinch.

"Three, two—"

Sam bared his teeth but held still as the first cut was made. A ribbon of blood flowed down into his shirt. Dean could see his pulse at the base of his throat, going too quickly.

He turned the blade the other way for the second slash. "Who's your favourite Spice Girl?"

"What—? Ugh!" A flinch this time, but it was done. Dean set the knife down, fingers on either side of the parasite. He began to squeeze.

"Dean..."

"I know it hurts, Sam."

"No... What if there's something like this in my real body?"

Fear was barely contained on Dean's face. "Garth."

Sam nodded. He was so white he made the marble floor look grey.

Dean clenched his teeth, then refocused on the parasite. "Even if something like that were to happen, Garth could handle it. He's keeping an eye on our bodies so he'd notice this new beauty mark. Now hold still. It's a fighter."

Sam's grimace was more of revulsion than pain as Dean pressed around the bump, forcing the parasite to the surface. Yellow fluid oozed out, mixing with blood and black mucus and releasing a smell that made rotten eggs seem like _Chanel_.

"I'm gonna be sick."

Dean heard Dave retching behind him but ignored it, scowling at the tiny black tentacle that squirmed out of the cuts Dean had made. Fingers slippery, he shifted to adjust them around the bump and the creature took the opportunity to slip back inside its warm host.

"Oh no, you don't." He squeezed again, and as a tendril oozed out, he pinched it, taking pleasure in watching it squirm helplessly. He pulled on it gently, more tentacles and juices came with it. Sam began to lean sideways along the door, away from his brother, and Dean knew it wasn't to speed the process along.

"Almost out."

"Just do it quick. Like a band-aid."

Gritting his teeth, Dean obeyed, yanking on the tendril as though pulling a weed from the earth. The thing that came out was like a tiny black octopus, but without a discernible head. It was fun to crush in his fist.

Sam closed his eyes, releasing a breath. "Thanks."

"No problem. Can you get up?"

"Give me a moment."

Dean nodded, then rummaged through his brother's jacket until he found the walkie-talkie. He stood, beckoning Dave over. The youth wiped his mouth and obeyed.

"Watch him. Once the pus is gone, use your sleeve to stop the bleeding."

Dave nodded, kneeling beside Sam as Dean turned on the walkie-talkie.

"Garth? Garth, it's Dean. Come in, Garth."

Hiss. Sputter. Garble. He changed the station.

"Garth, it's Dean. Come in."

Sam blearily looked at Dave, who didn't seem to want to meet his eye. His face was a light tan, his black hair cut military style. His eyes were gently almond-shaped and brown, but one was blackened with bruises and his bottom lip was split and swollen. It wasn't of Dean's doing.

"You know what that thing is," Sam said softly.

"What?"

"That demon. E—"

"Don't!" A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Don't say its name. It knows when someone says its name."

Dave looked at the other man, who continued to test stations on the walkie-talkie. He had no idea what he thought he was doing but knew better than to tell him the futility of communicating with the outside world. He and his friends never managed.

"You know what it is," repeated the taller man softly. "I'm Sam, by the way. That's Dean, my brother."

"Dave. And yep. I figured out what it was, but by then it was too late. Not that knowing what it was was going to save us."

"You seem pretty calm, considering."

"I knew something was wrong, more than just about waking up in this damn place. The others insisted we were on some kind of acid trip, but I had a feeling we weren't really...on earth anymore."

"Did you believe in E— um, the demon before this?"

Dave grimaced. "Course not. It was just an old legend."

"Garth! Come in, Garth!" Dean looked to be barely containing his anger. Dave looked back to Sam.

"What is it?" asked Sam. His eyes weren't focusing. "The legend?"

"It's about a forest demon that hunted in the woods a long time ago. It was said to be twice as tall as a man and it could drive guys insane with a single glance. But a Native woman called Running Deer managed to scare it away with the use of a cat mask." He shrugged. "That's pretty much it."

Sam tried to smile. A weak twitch of the lips. "Well, in our experience, demons aren't scared by masks. They have to be exorcised or killed. If anything like that actually happened, more of something would have had to have been done. Maybe Running Deer banished it. Maybe she trapped it. But whatever the case, it came back and destroyed this family in the mid-eighteenth century."

Dave stared askance at him. "Who _are_ you?"

"Just a couple guys trying to do the right thing."

"Garth. Garth! DAMMIT!" Dean very nearly threw the walkie-talkie across the room in rage, but Sam softly saying his name was enough to stay his hand.

"What could he do anyway?" he said.

"Wake you up!" Dean snapped. "If this part of you can affect your body out there, then your body can affect this part of you in here."

"I'm sorry. What's going on?" asked Dave.

Knowing Dean wasn't going to indulge him with information, Sam decided to explain. "We spoke to a friend, Garth, in the real world with a walkie-talkie a short while back. He said our bodies appeared dead, but were receiving the same wounds we got in here, the Collective Unconscious."

"The what?"

"The Collective..." He sighed wearily. "Doesn't matter. Basically we're experiencing another dimension created by the demon. The minds and souls of the Corvus family and their staff are trapped here, as is everyone who came to the manor since 1846. For some reason, figuring out what happened was supposed to get us out of here, but..." Sam shook his head. "I don't see how."

"We've got less than an hour left," said Dean. "Then we're just as stuck as you and your friends are."

For a moment Dave looked ill. But he found enough composure to say, "What can I do to help?"

"For starters, tell us everything you learned about the family. Maybe you found something we didn't."

"Okay. Okay, well... Um, we all...shared a vision, in the music room. We saw a woman with red hair dancing with—"

"Judge Thomas, yeah, we saw it too. We thought he was cheating on his wife, Ariel. But we learned later that both Angelina – the redhead – and Ariel were in on it. Turns out they're sisters. Witches, too. They mentioned releasing a demon, which must be that thing that was in the conservatory and the cellar. E—"

"Don't," said Sam.

"Right. E-W-A-H," Dean spelled out. He grimaced. "But that's a pretty name."

"What else do you know?" Sam prompted Dave.

"Well, I found a couple death certificates, just lying around. One was for...Jack. Jack Corvus. He hanged himself in the gallery. This room, I guess. And, um—"

"Wait," said Sam, "why?"

Dave shrugged. "Didn't say. He was a painter, though. Artistic. Overly-dramatic, maybe?"

"What year, do you remember?"

"1845, I think. That's all I remember."

"Alright. Who else?"

"Atticus Corvus. He committed suicide, too, after he started seeing things. Thought he was being chased by the devil."

"So naturally, you kill yourself," said Dean blandly. "Go on."

"Cynthia, Atticus' wife. They presumed her dead after some servants saw her wander into the woods. When they tried to follow, they couldn't find her. I don't remember the year but it was the same as Atticus' death."

"Where did you find these death certificates?" Dean demanded.

"Just lying around."

He looked to Sam. "How did we not see any?"

Shrugging would have been too painful. Sam merely flicked a finger. "Didn't expect to see them, I guess."

Dean sighed. "Anything else?"

"A man was murdered in the parlour. We figured it was a priest—"

"Pastor Gregory," Sam interrupted again. "We discovered that too. And his crucifix necklace led us a message hidden in a bible."

Dean fished said message out of his jacket and unfolded it. "He knew something was up. The last line, 'Beware the Beast.' And whoever killed him must have messed him up pretty badly." He would never forget the sight of the mutilated remains crawling after him through those dark and narrow halls, screaming like a wounded animal, spewing acidic blood that scalded his face—

"The key with the bible opened a desk in the master bedroom."

Sam's words jostled Dean out of the past.

"Yeah, which gave us the tinderbox." Dean nodded to Dave. "Your buddy George helped me open it. He remembered your translation. Before he disappeared," he added, killing Dave's hopeful expression.

"The witchlight inside allowed me to go down the well shaft in the cellar and get..." Sam trailed off. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"I...lost the brick."

"What brick?"

"The one from the well. I used it to defend myself in the conservatory and..."

"You said there was nothing special about that brick, Sam."

"Doesn't mean it wasn't going to be of use! We have to—"

"Whoa, whoa, where do you think you're going?" Dean kept him down with one hand.

"We might need it!"

"It's a brick, Sam! A...!" He trailed off, frowning. "Wait. You said you pulled it out of the wall in the well because it was sticking out a bit, right?"

Sam nodded.

"...Did it ever occur to you that there might have been something hidden _behind_ the brick?"

If possible, Sam went even more white and he didn't blink for several seconds. Dean pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I...I'm sorry, Dean—"

"It's fine."

"I was out of breath, I didn't think... Look. I know where the spot is—"

"Ah ha, not a chance, Aquaman. Hell, I might be wrong. Let's just work with what we've got for right now."

Sam released a sigh but nodded, lips pressed, and pulled out three bloodied sheets of paper from his jacket. The missing pages from Atticus' journal. He passed them and the flashlight to Dean, then closed his eyes. It was more comfortable that way.

There were several tense moments as Dean read in silence, thought quicker than tongue. And when he got to the meat of it, he shook his head.

"Every family has a skeleton in their closet. And we've just found the Corvus's."

"What is it?" Sam asked sleepily.

"Well, as we already know, the family made their fortune in the lumber industry. They carved through Tennessee with dozens of work camps, employing hundreds. Of course, someone was bound to get hurt somewhere along the line." Dean tapped near the bottom of the page. "And on October 17th, 1822, someone did. A lot of someones. Crushed under a collapsed log pile."

Sam half raised his eyebrows. "Uh huh."

"Try to show a little sympathy, Sammy."

He made a noncommittal sound, and Dean continued.

"Atticus goes on to discuss the lengths he made to hide the tragedy, sneaking around worker's compensation, silencing grieving widows, et cetera, et cetera. On top of that, he never wanted to pay physicians to stay full time at the camps. And at the same camp, sickness struck, killing another thirty or so. Not just workers – wives, children, anyone staying or visiting at the time. The site was abandoned, giving Atticus the chance to cover it all up. He wrote that he was ashamed of his actions, how he 'put reputation over that of the well-being of others and life in general.'"

Silence. Sam cracked an eye open. "'S that all?"

"That is all." Dean dropped the third page, trying to look nonchalant. But in truth, he was confused. What did this past tragedy have to do with what happened twenty-two years later?

He looked to his brother, wondering how they were going to win this one. He frowned.

"Sam?"

"Mmph?"

"This isn't nap time."

"Hmph."

"Get up."

"'M tired."

"Don't care. Get up." No way in hell was he going to leave Sam here alone. He hooked his arm under his brother's and heaved him to his feet. Sam sagged like a drunk, leaning heavily on him.

"...Dean!"

"What?" Dean followed Sam's gaze, eyes wide. But he saw nothing.

"It's him. It's Jack. The guy who hanged himself."

"...I don't see him, Sam."

"Oh." Sam relaxed. "It's okay. He isn't doing anything. He's just looking at paintings."

Dean turned to Dave. "You see him?"

"...Yeah."

"Hey, Dean, I just thought of something," Sam slurred. "We have somewhere to go when we get outta here. But they cut up Dave's body to find out how he died."

Dean stiffened, ashen. It had been a thought that tickled his mind for the past while, but never would he have uttered it in front of Dave, who looked like he was going to be sick. Again.

Swallowing, the young man said, "I...I'm dead now, aren't I?"

The elder Winchester nodded curtly, genuine sympathy coating his words. "Yes. Sorry, man."

"Oh...did I...?" said Sam, realization spawning several seconds too late.

"We gotta move."

"Where we goin'?"

"Not sure. We can't stay here. That thing might find us." He pretended to not notice the croaking sounds, just within the limits of his hearing. It was the very sound he'd heard moments before the thing in the cellar took his eyes.


	32. String

***12:46***

* * *

~32~ String

Dave tailed the brothers out of the gallery and down the hall. Dean tried to coax Sam faster, but he was like a sack of potatoes. A very large, very tired sack of potatoes.

"Wait. Dean. 'Ave an idea," Sam slurred.

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Ariel. I c'n...I c'n communicate with Ariel."

"What makes you say that?"

"I'm...not doing so hot. If I can see that other dude in the gallery, then I can probably see her. Talk to her."

"Sam, you shouldn't be like this at all. We gotta...we gotta..."

"Gotta what, Dean?" Sam tried to stand by himself, but it was like his legs weren't his own. "Please. Let's just try." He decided not to mention the ghost-like glimpses of other people he started to see roaming the hallway. Especially because some of them were staring at the trio. "It may be our only chance without...you know..."

"No, I don't know."

"...Never mind. Just trust me. Please."

Without answering, Dean took him to the stairs, and it was a slow, careful journey down to the next floor. Turning left, towards the west wing, Sam was struck with another idea.

"We should return her baby."

"What are you talking about?"

Sam pointed towards Atticus' office. "The unborn baby. Maybe if we take it with us, Ariel will listen."

"If you think I'm gonna touch that thing—"

Sam shuddered, and suddenly Dean was supporting his entire weight. He cursed. "Sam?"

"'M alright." He lurched back up, rubbing his eyes. "It was that monster. Poisoned me to slow us down." He scratched his chest, around the X cut into his skin, where Dean had squeezed the parasite out. The wound there still weeping pus. At least it had stopped bleeding.

"Well I'm going to need you to suck it up, Sam, sorry."

"I know, I know." To prove it, he pulled away from his brother, bracing himself against the wall. He started towards Atticus' office, feet like cement blocks. But determination drove him right to the door and he pushed it open to darkness.

Dean followed with the flashlight – now that he was without the lantern – and turned towards the desk. He blinked. The good news – the corpse beneath the sheet, believed to have once been Atticus Corvus, was gone. The bad news, it was _gone_.

Neck hairs standing, he quickly panned the light across the room. It was empty. What was more, the man-sized hole in the wall, which had lead to the nursemaid's room next door, was boarded up. For whatever reason, it unsettled him.

Sam somehow made it over to the desk without falling on his face, propping himself on it. Before him were the balance scales, one side burdened with a severed tongue, the other with Ariel's undeveloped fetus, which Agnes, her granddaughter, had cut from her body.

The last he'd seen it, the fetus wasn't moving. But as though it sensed its new purpose, it started to wiggle again, making sticky sounds, eyes sealed and mouth open. Its stick arms and legs shifted feebly.

He didn't want to touch it, but now wasn't the time to be a sissy. He scooped the fetus up in one hand and then made the long journey back to the door, where Dean stood guard.

"Where's Dave?"

Dean turned. The corridor was empty. "Didn't hear him leave."

"Hey, Dave."

The wait for a response was in vain.

"...Let's just get this over with."

Two doors down was the master bedroom, in which Dean took the lead, shotgun at the ready. The room was brighter than the office, but he did not trust the shadows. Nor did he trust the light.

"Alright, come on."

Sam followed, looking about cautiously as he made for the conjoined nursery. Dean covered him at the threshold as he placed the fetus in the crib. White sheets became smeared with bloody mucus, and the babe didn't seem to appreciate leaving the warmth of Sam's hand. But he withdrew it and turned away, senses perked for anything approaching.

Silence. Sam deflated, bracing himself to push off from the crib and return to the main room. Guard down, he nearly fell over at the sudden screech that tore through the room. He staggered away from the crib, back hitting a dresser.

"The hell?" Dean raised the gun, eyes wide.

"There, Dean. She's there." Sam pointed to the opposite side of the nursery.

"I can't see her."

The woman in white stood with her head sagging to one side. Black scarlet stained her wrists, and across her middle was an open gash. Mascara streamed down her cheeks and her hair was a nest piled atop her head. When she advanced, her feet didn't move. She drifted across the floor and began to circle the crib, eyes riveted on the infant there. It was unsettling to watch, and Sam was beginning to believe this wasn't such a great idea after all.

"Sam?"

Jolting, he glanced at Dean, and when he looked back to Ariel, she had stopped with her back to him, still staring into the crib.

Sam swallowed and began to side step towards his brother. He broke out in a sudden cold sweat, vision blurring. When he blinked, bringing Ariel back into focus, he watched her head turn completely around to face him, neck cracking as it twisted in the impossible direction. A dark trickle ran down from the corner of her mouth.

"Fi-i-i-i-ind he-e-e-er," she rasped.

Sam licked suddenly very dry lips. "Who?"

She tilted her head, and he could see the vertebrae in her neck pop and jerk around beneath her skin.

"Fi-i-i-i-ind he-e-e-er."

"Sam, what's going on?"

"She's saying, 'find her.'"

"Find who? Angelina?"

Ariel, eyes riveted on Sam, nodded slowly.

"Yeah," he said.

"Where?"

Ariel continued to stare at him, jaw slack.

"You mus-s-st...fi-i-i-i-ind he-e-e-er."

"Alright. We will." Again Sam began to slide towards the exit. He froze as Ariel raised an arm over the crib – and then drove her hand into the gash in her middle, reaching deep inside her own body. Sam grimaced, cringing at the wet, sticky sounds as she dug around. Then, with a sickening _shlop_ , she pulled her hand out, glazed in dead blood. There was something pinched between her fingers, which she flung at him.

He only just caught it, but he didn't look at it, eyes trained on her.

"Fi-i-i-i-ind he-e-e-er."

Nodding, Sam decided to chance one more question.

"Is..." He swallowed dryly. "Is Agnes the one behind all this?"

Again she cocked her head, the other way.

"Did your granddaughter murder your family?"

Pain, sorrow and desperation morphed into rage quicker than the flip of a switch. Mournful eyes became black voids and her jaw stretched low, animal teeth flashing into sight. She roared, body twisting around and pouncing.

Sam cursed, dropping to the ground. Ariel latched onto the dresser behind him like a spider, then began to crawl up the wall. Sam took it he'd overstayed his welcome.

"Time to go."

Dean couldn't see the ghost but he could see the puncture and claw marks she left as she climbed the wall, onto the ceiling. He grabbed Sam's arm and hauled him out of the nursery.

"Well don't you know how to ask a woman the right questions."

They darted out into the hallway and slammed the bedroom door shut behind them, and then Sam leaned against it before sliding down onto his rear, utterly spent.

"No, no, don't sit down."

"Just give me a moment."

"We don't have a moment."

"Dean—" Like a sleepy child, he moaned in protest as Dean hauled him back to his feet.

"Sam. Hey, look at me. Don't give up on me, dude."

"Two minutes."

"No."

"One minute."

"Dammit, Sam—!"

Hiss. Spit. Garble. Dean froze, then pulled the walkie-talkie out of his jacket, hitting the talk button. He kept one hand on Sam, pinning him against the wall.

"Garth? Come in, Garth!"

Sputter. Hiss. Then—

" _Dean?_ "

He sagged with relief. "Finally."

" _That was quick. Whatcha find out, buddy?_ "

"Been over an hour for us, bud. Garth, we found out what's been doing this. It's a demon called E-W-A-H. Don't say its name."

" _That's...a nice name_."

"Yeah, yeah, a real Mary Poppins in here. See what you can find out about about it."

" _I will. But, Dean. It's almost one in the morning._ "

"I know, Garth. One more thing. Give Sam some kind of adrenaline shot."

" _Adrenaline?_ "

"He's crashing on me. Wake his ass up, man."

" _Oo-kay. Oh, you tried to tell me something before we lost contact before. What...?_ "

Dean had stopped listening. Something was coming down the corridor towards him. A darkness deeper than the dark around it. Low croaking sounds reached his ears.

"Dean..."

"We gotta move." He pocketed the walkie-talkie and pulled Sam's arm over his shoulder.

"Dean." Sam's head lolled as he looked around. They were everywhere. Men and women in nineteenth century garb, some wounded, some spattered with gore or dirt, all staring at the brothers stolidly.

Dean could not see them. He guided Sam towards the balcony overlooking the foyer. There, he paused, glancing over his shoulder.

But Sam had eyes only for the ghosts of Corvus Manor. They continued to stare at the Winchesters, turning without moving their feet to follow their progress.

Dave appeared out of the darkness. But it wasn't Dave anymore. He trembled and shook and twitched, spittle all around his mouth. He moved like a zombie and his eyes were rolled up.

The ghosts began to smile at Sam, all in sync, wide, mirthless smiles that split their cheeks and exposed too many teeth.

Dave fell to his knees, arms out to the sides, head tilted back. And from his mouth spewed rancid, dark red fluid that was not blood. When root-like tendrils burst out, wiggling and thrashing in the air, Dean turned away. Dave was lost.

"Come on, Sam."

Once setting foot on floor of the foyer, the ghosts vanished. As did Dave. The brothers looked to each other.

"Now what?"

Ω

"This is crazy. _You_ are crazy."

Garth ignored Detective Roberts, focused only on finding something to wake Sam up in one of the many cupboards. Not that he had much hope something would be here, where the patients were already dead.

"I can't believe I'm allowing this!" the detective continued, pacing before the desk. He gestured at Sam's body, which, he didn't want to acknowledge, had a fresh, nasty wound on the chest. "It's a damn corpse!"

"It may be damned, young man, but it is no corpse," said Lilly Andersen. She was sitting at the desk, reading glasses out, scanning the book of Cherokee legends Garth had gotten from the library.

"And what is this demon nonsense? There's no such thing."

"Yet you have heard from your very own radio the voice of a man who should be inhabiting this body but isn't." She tipped her chin at Dean's remains, currently shrouded. "And where is Dr Corrigan? I told you to bring her here."

"She says she's coming," Roberts grumbled. "But I think she should go home. She looked exhausted."

"We all are." Garth yawned wide enough to tear up. He blinked furiously and kept looking. It was eighteen minutes to one in the morning, not long since he'd last spoken with the Winchesters through Roberts' radio. But Dean said it had been over an hour for them, and before he could give more details, the connection was lost once more. Garth had no idea if they were any closer to escaping the Collective Unconscious, or if anything could be done from the outside world.

The only clue they got was a name. This Ewah, a demon he had never heard of before. But Lilly had, from stories her mother told her when she was a child.

"Ah ha, here," said the aged woman, pointing to the page. "The demon who is not to be named roamed the forest, turning every man it saw insane. When a Cherokee woman, called Running Deer, lost her husband to the beast, she sought to drive it from the woods herself. With the blessing and advice of the elders, she wore a Wampus Cat mask and ambushed the demon, screaming maniacally. This allegedly scared the demon away." Lilly closed the book and took off her glasses. "But I remember a different story."

Garth was so engrossed he forgot what he was looking for. "And how did it go?"

"There was a woman and there was a mask, but the demon was not driven away. Supposedly, according to my mother and her mother, Running Deer trapped it in a cave and left it to rot, and there it did for centuries. The tribe protected the secret until the Europeans came and took control of the land. After that, the location of the prison was lost, even to the Cherokee." Lilly sighed. "If those boys are right, then a hundred and fifty years ago, someone found that demon and released it."

"But why?"

"Why seek out any demon? To make a deal. But who made the deal, and why...I cannot say. That is for your friends to discover."

Roberts stared between the pair, rolling a piece of gum in his mouth. Then he shook his head. "Out of your goddamn minds."

"If you truly believed that, detective, you would have arrested us already," said Lilly, nose tilted up in a challenging stare.

"Are there any crows in your story?" asked Garth suddenly.

"Crows? No, dear boy. Why?"

He shook his head. "Just something I noticed. On the way to Corvus Manor, there were no animals except for crows. And they all hung out just outside the grounds, not within them, and no more than half a click out."

"And what do you suppose that means?"

Garth shrugged and gazed around the room. There were no more places to search. "I need some form of adrenaline," he mumbled.

Roberts scoffed. "You've got to be joking."

"Be right back." Garth hastened out of the examination room, trotting down the hall of the morgue to the back door. Orange light beamed through the narrow window into the dark hallway, and Garth was struck with sudden malaise. Why he hadn't paused to search for a light switch was beyond him.

Perhaps there was one beside the door. He approached, stepping lightly. He found the switch but it clicked uselessly at his touch.

 _It's fine. There's light. And a good hunter can work in both light and darkness._

He pushed open the door. An icy wind had picked up, biting Garth's face with needle teeth. He stepped out, keeping the door open as he scoped the near-empty back lot. There was his pickup, a few metres away.

Still holding the door, he took another step. His foot brushed something and he looked down.

A dead crow, flat on its back, wings half open. Alarm made way for pity. No doubt it hit the building, blown off course in the wind. He was about to step over it when he noticed something wrong.

Kneeling, Garth tilted his head to let the amber light shine directly on the hapless creature. String. There was string wrapped around its beak, tied in a neat bow.

That was a threat if he ever saw one. Garth was up and back inside in a heartbeat.

"No one goes outside," he declared as he reentered the examination room.

"Why?" Roberts demanded. Not liking the way Garth looked, his hand drifted towards his empty holster.

"Something's out there, and it's onto us. I don't know what. Balls!" He bashed a counter, making its contents jump. "Dean said give Sam adrenaline. I might have something in my truck but I can't get to my truck!"

Lilly had nothing to offer. But Roberts had a look on his face that heralded an awkward confession.

"I have an EpiPen," he said at last, pulling it out of his jacket. "It should do the trick."

Garth reached for it hesitantly. "What are you allergic to?"

"Bees. I think I'll be safe in here."

"Thank you. Sam would thank you too if...you know." Garth took it and returned to the younger Winchester's side. He heaved a sigh.

"Hope this works, Dean."

* * *

 **Anyone catch sight of the "super blue blood moon" this morning? Stupid clouds...**


	33. Deep

***12:49***

* * *

~33~ Deep

"Now what?"

The brothers had spoken in unison, and each face fell in response. After all they had done, all they had searched for, the only information they had was how some people died, and what was hunting them now. Ariel and Angelina had something to do with it, but they had only seen Angelina in visions of the past, and Ariel had gone hostile again. They had entered every room possible, every room except for the one behind the mysterious door emblazoned with symbols. But that one they could no longer reach, for it was in the alternate third floor, which they hadn't seen since their first trip up there.

"It makes sense now," Dean mumbled.

"Mm?" Sam sat on the foyer stairs, resting his head in his hands.

"When I woke up in the bedroom in the beginning of this goose chase, I opened a wardrobe and found that rose key. You know, the one that opened the door to the third floor. But there was also a note. Said, Come find me. I think Angelina left that key, and the note."

Sam blinked slowly, sleepily. "You think she's responsible for the clock riddle too?"

Dean shrugged. "Maybe. Could have been left by the demon."

"So maybe Angelina's on the third floor somewhere. If she gave you that key..."

Again he shrugged. "Sounds like she wanted to be found. She had all the time in the world for that."

Sam yawned. A spawn of Ewah had done something to him, poisoned him, to slow him down and weaken him. Sam took it as a sign that he and Dean were getting close to cracking the mystery. Too close.

"Almost forgot. Ariel gave me this." He held up the copper broach the ghost had pulled from inside herself. It was in the shape of a leaf, the veins and stem silver.

"And what good is a pin?"

Sam shrugged and tossed it to him. "Beats me."

Catching the broach, Dean fiddled with it as he paced, delving through his memories. "So. We know some catastrophe at a work camp was covered up by Atticus, and all attempts to avoid compensating widows or orphans were taken."

"I think that was pretty normal back then," said Sam.

"Yep. Doesn't mean people wouldn't get angry. Seems like a perfectly good reason to want revenge."

Sam watched him, and he took it as his cue to continue. It was easier to think clearly now that the demon wasn't hovering somewhere in the dark. At least, didn't seem to be.

"Now what do we know about Ariel's husband, the 'honourable' Judge Thomas? He was the last owner of the house, but, if that painting in Atticus' office was anything to go by, he had a brother, an older one because Thomas became a judge, not an entrepreneur like their dad. So why was Thomas the owner and not his brother?"

"It's possible his brother died, or was disowned," said Sam.

"Possibly."

"...Say he was. Dead or disowned, leaving Thomas with the Corvus inheritance. That would make him an appealing partner."

"For anyone of posh standing. If Angelina was a servant, how did Ariel hook up with the judge?"

"Maybe they just took on roles. Angelina could have played a handmaid for Ariel, who pretended to be from a wealthy family."

"Or maybe Thomas wasn't concerned with tradition."

"If he wasn't, then his whole family wouldn't be, seeing as he married her," said Sam. "Otherwise, his father might have given him the boot."

"Okay. So he got a gold-digger wife. Doesn't explain why Angelina released a demon on the family. Especially because they were of her blood too, even if they didn't know it."

"Maybe Angelina was bitter about the arrangement..." Sam trailed off. "No. There didn't seem to be any animosity between them when I heard them talking in the nursery. Regretful, but not angry."

"Then it was an accident."

Sam shook his head. His thoughts were cloudy and speculations were slow in the coming. "I think their plan went awry when it was Thomas who sired the continuation of the family, not his brother."

"What do you mean?"

"...I'm not sure." Sam lowered his head again. His train of thought had derailed. So he jumped on a carriage just to keep moving forward.

"There's no time to check all the rooms again," he said sluggishly. "Just...think. What did we miss?"

A line creased Dean's brow. "Well. You already said, didn't you."

"What?"

"The brick you took from the well shaft in the cellar. You never checked to see if there was anything behind it."

"Right, right." Sam rubbed his eyes. "Then we'll just have to—" He sprang to his feet like the stairs were on fire. "Holy Jesus!"

Dean recoiled, staring. "What?"

"I feel...I feel...awake!" Sam blinked rapidly, glancing down at himself. "Everything hurts but I don't feel like I'm going to fall asleep anymore."

"Ha ha! Well done, Garth." Dean grinned. He was, after all, the one who asked Garth to give Sam some form of adrenaline to his body in the real world. "Now let's hope it lasts."

He looked confused but only asked, "Where are you going?"

"The cellar. Come on, Sam, we're getting close. I can feel it."

* * *

Descending for the third time into the depths of the manor, the stairs creaking and bowing, Sam gave Dean the witchlight, for not only did he insist on leading, he also had the shotgun, which he couldn't use if he was holding the flashlight. Dean seemed annoyed by the floating green candle near his head but he accepted the arrangement philosophically. It would have been the same even if he hadn't dropped the lantern in the conservatory.

Sam, for his part, kept hold of his knife, conscious of the pair of silver dinnerware in his pocket. Somewhere along the line he'd lost the fire poker, but there was no time to look for it.

"Did you happen to see where Dave got off to?"

Dean grimaced, pausing on the stone landing that turned the stairway ninety degrees. "E— I mean, the demon got him. Would have gotten us too if we hadn't... Sorry, Sam. He's done for."

Sam nodded grimly. "No hope for him anyway. His body's dead. All we can do for him is set his soul free."

"Seemed to be a nice kid. He'll make it upstairs."

Dean continued down into hell, ash puffing up around his feet. At the bottom, he froze.

"Smell that?"

Sam sniffed, then grimaced. "It's growing back, isn't it?"

It was. Black red root-like tendrils had started to reclaim the cellar, growing through cracks in the walls and ceiling. Oddly, none came out of the well shaft as they had before.

On impulse, Sam attacked the growths with a silver knife, making them shrivel and smoke and die, hoping it would slow their advance. Dean made for the well, standing at its edge.

"Sam."

As his brother strode over, Dean knelt, peering into the depths. "Something seem different to you?"

Sam shone the flashlight down. And once more despair encroached on his will. "Great. Water's gone."

"And there goes our easy way down." Barely containing his anger, Dean stood and paced, kicking up ash, scowling.

Sam studied the shaft, four by four feet, descending into darkness. He could see one of them climbing down far enough, but getting back up would prove quite the challenge.

"Well. I guess we'll just have to make some rope."

"Rope?"

"Yep. One of us will go down, the other will hold his weight up here. Be a belay."

They stared at each other.

"I'll go—"

"No friggin' way, Sam."

"I'm the idiot who didn't think to look behind the brick to begin with!"

"You're tired!"

"So are you."

"Not as much."

He scowled. "Dean—"

"No, Sam! I just saved your ass, now you gotta do what I say. Got it?"

Eyes like stone, Sam looked away in submission. Argument was wasting time.

"Good...There are enough damn windows in this house. We should be able to get a decent amount of curtain cords. Let's go."

* * *

Within minutes they had enough cords to tie together two simple harnesses and braid a long cable. For whatever reason, Sam could recall the knots he'd learned in an outdoors class he took in middle school, although he was skeptical about the strength of the cords.

"Just another reason I should go down," said Dean. "I'm not as bulky as you are."

The thought did not rest Sam's discomfort as Dean started down the shaft, witchlight illuminating the way. He kept his back to one wall and his feet to the other, easing himself down in a controlled descent. Sam stood a ways back from the edge and kept the rope taut. He did not take Dean's weight, as he would only exhaust himself before he needed to, and the walls were narrow and rough enough that Dean had no issues. There wasn't even water scum to worry about.

Sam was left in darkness. The emerald glow from the pit was almost too dim to see and he had pocketed the flashlight to spare the batteries. He regretted that decision, but he dared not take a hand off the rope. Who knew how deep the shaft delved, and even if Dean couldn't die from a plunge in this form, his body would shatter in the real world.

The makeshift harness he'd tied around his chest suddenly seemed as strong as silly string.

"Almost there, Sam!" the call echoed from the depths, and he released a sigh of relief. At least the rope had been long enough. He still had some slack to feed out.

Then, the sounds of flapping. Sam had difficulty placing it until feathers brushed past his cheek, a bird flying down through the stairway behind him.

" _Awk!_ " It landed somewhere nearby, claws clicking on the floor. " _Awk!_ "

Sam stiffened. Before, he might have felt hope. The girl did, after all, help make sense of what dimension they were in and retrieved one of Dean's eyes for them. But after seeing little Agnes commit infanticide, he didn't know what to make of the sole survivor of the Corvus massacre.

"Sam, I found something! I— _whoa!_ "

Unprepared, Sam staggered two steps before throwing his weight back and locking his body, coming to a halt. His heart throbbed from the near catastrophe and his eyes were wide, but he forced himself to relax.

No doubt Dean had slipped. Sam's hands tightened on the rope. If he had to, he might be able to haul Dean up. But his shoes had precious little friction on the floor and the knots could pull loose as they ran over the edge, if the braided cord didn't snap altogether. And there was nothing that they could have anchored the end of the rope to, not so much as a hand railing.

When the next jerk came, the tension endured. His hold on the rope held but his feet slid along the stone floor, plowing through the ash. It was like something was pulling Dean further down the well.

"No!"

Sam turned, ducking beneath the rope so it came over his shoulder, and he started to pull. He had a flashback of when he was the one in the shaft, when it was full of water, and Dean refused to let him go as the ghost of Tom Jr. nearly drowned him. Sam would pull if it snapped every tendon in his body.

He expected the pain of strain to strike—

Then the weight vanished, tension evaporating, and he fell on his face.

"Oof!"

Confusion struck even though he knew full well what had happened. Flat on his stomach, Sam looked back towards the shaft. There was no more emerald glow from the witchlight.

"Dean?"

Scrambling to his feet, he pulled out the flashlight and clicked it on. It flickered. He hit it against the palm of his hand and rushed to the edge of the hole. The orb of light could not reach the depths, but the rope continued down, unbroken. He still could not see any green light.

"DEAN!" _DEAN...! Een...! Een..._

Silence. Sam's stomach clenched so hard he almost retched.

He had failed him. He had failed his brother while he was correcting Sam's mistake.

Perhaps it was the shock. Perhaps it was indifference. But Sam didn't pull up the rope that was tied around his chest. He just remained on his hands and knees, head hanging low.

" _Awk!_ "

Agnes hovered overhead, and Sam opened his eyes just in time to see the crow dive through the beam of the flashlight, into the pit.

Sam had no idea what she was up to and he didn't care. Dean was gone. The game was over. They were stuck here forever, or until some other hunter miraculously solved the mystery and set everyone free. Sam turned away and reached for the shotgun Dean had left.

He would find Ewah and blast it with every shot left in the gun. If he went insane in the process, at least it was better than slowly losing his mind as he endured the days trapped in this godforsaken house alone.

He had not yet stood when he felt a jerk on the rope. He looked dumbly at it, eyes following it back to the well. By the time the peril had pierced the veil of Sam's sorrow, he was too late to pull off the harness and the rope was yanked on again, hauling him towards the abyss. He cracked his head on the edge and was too stunned to catch himself before he was in freefall, plunging into darkness without a sound.


	34. Deeper

***12:52***

* * *

~34~ Deeper

"Sam... _Sammy._ "

He was lying face down on sand. He expected the pain of a hundred broken bones but instead felt nothing but a general discomfort. He opened one eye to darkness, blinking slowly, and heard a sigh of relief.

"You okay?"

"Dean?" He stirred feebly. "You're alive?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Where are you?"

A hand wormed its way under his arm and rolled him over. Sand stuck to the side of his face and it ground between his molars. He spat.

"What happened to you?"

"Not really sure." Dean was kneeling beside him. The witchlight hovered near his head, but he'd reduced its flame to a mere dot, just enough for them to see the gleam in each others' eyes. "I just...fell. Woke up here."

The nausea of his mistake returned and Sam looked to him, stricken. "I'm sorry. I thought those knots—"

Dean shook his head. "Wasn't your fault. Here."

Something touched Sam's chest and he took it, feeling it. It was the end of the braided curtain cords they'd used for rope. The break was clean, as though it had been sliced.

"You didn't see what—?"

"Nope. Didn't see a damn thing. I did get this though."

"...Dean, you're going to have to risk a little more light."

There was a hesitation in which Sam sensed the unease. But then the green flame tripled in size, illuminating the black sand they were sitting in. Not high above was a brick ceiling, with no indication of where the well shaft was.

"Where are we?"

"Dunno. Haven't done much exploring." Dean showed him what he had found in the well shaft cache, the reason they had taken the risk to begin with. "Voila."

"...A rock."

"Not just any rock." Dean moved the floating candle a little closer and tapped the stone with feigned smugness. "A rock with doodles on it."

Sam stared, then scoffed. "Of course. Cherokee text."

"And the only guy who could have helped us is not only way above our heads, but also has been reduced to a bag of loose screws."

Sam slumped. "There's no hope for us, is there." Not a question.

Before Dean could answer, the hiss of shifting sand came from their left. Then a sound like snapping twigs.

"Sam. Please tell me you got the shotgun."

A muscle jumped in Sam's jaw. "I...I did grab it but..." He looked around. Was he still holding it when he was pulled in? He'd hit his head and couldn't remember the fall.

He felt around until his hand touched something cold and hard. The flashlight. He seized it and flicked in on.

"No, don't!"

Off it went. "What?"

"They're attracted to light."

"What are?"

Dean didn't answer, crawling around, feeling desperately.

"Ah ha! Hello, baby." The gun appeared and he shook it free of sand.

"Dean, what's attracted to light?"

"Dunno, haven't seen one. But they stopped moving after I dimmed the candle, when I first woke up. And now they're moving in again."

Nerves afire, Sam got up. The ceiling was no higher than an inch over his head, and it was impossible to resist slouching. Something slithered through the sand.

"I'm not really up for seeing what it is, are you?"

"Nope."

Stumbling through the darkness, the brothers chose a direction and followed it. Dean led the way, shotgun half raised, while Sam guarded his back, constantly scanning the darkness around them. Dean considered giving the gun to him. A difficult call to make, for although something of intelligence would recognize the gunman as the bigger threat, anything brutish could have a go at either of them.

Sam refused it. Dean stopped arguing because argument meant noise.

They continued on. It might have been a long-ass tunnel, or an endless stretch of nothing in every direction. Dean was more inclined to believe the latter, or, odds were, they would have come to a wall by now. It wasn't a consoling thought. Wide spaces meant lots of room to fight or run away. But it also meant there was room for more dark-dwellers.

"Figure this is part of the house?" asked Dean. He, too, slouched even though he would have to jump to hit his head on the low ceiling.

"In reality, no. In the demon's domain...hard to say." Sam glanced at his feet, at the black sand. "You find this stuff on the beaches of volcanic islands, not in underground waterways." Up at the ceiling. "And this is just wrong."

Something clicked. Sam whirled around, but of course, saw nothing.

Dean grew tense. Every fibre in his body told him something was closing in. Biding its time. Savouring the hunt. "I'm starting to think this was a bad idea."

"Which part? The moving away from where we were or getting up this morning to take this case?"

"Go back further. To when we let Garth consider us friends."

Sam scoffed but smiled. "You know your day isn't complete without one of his hugs."

"Shut up."

" _Awk!_ "

Both brothers stiffened and moved closer together, facing out. Agnes, in crow form, landed in the sand in front of Dean. She didn't look as emaciated as she did when he first found her. There was skin on both feet and her feathers were whole and glossy. She still smelled, but not as bad.

" _Awk!_ "

"Sam. What do I do?" Dean hissed.

"I don't know. Give her a kick for all I care," he mumbled back.

Agnes cawed indignantly, hopping forward to peck Dean's shoelaces. He lurched back, bumping into Sam.

" _Awk!_ "

"What do you want?" Dean demanded.

She cocked her head, looking up at him with one dead black eye. She fluttered off the ground, grabbing at his pant leg with her talons before landing and walking away. When Dean didn't follow, she returned and did it again.

"Do we follow?"

"...She hasn't led us astray yet."

"Dude, she..." Dean lowered his voice again. "She murdered a _baby_."

"Because of the demon. Probably. Dean, what else can we do? I don't think we're even supposed to _be_ here."

"Of course we're not supposed to be here!"

"You know what I mean."

"What, you think this is out-of-bounds? That we've wandered off stage? What—?"

" _Awk!_ "

The crow flew up at Dean's face, flapping angrily before landing and strutting off into the dark again.

"We have no time for this, Dean." Sam strode ahead, intending to make a point but failing miserably as he blocked the green witchlight with his own body, preventing him from seeing where Agnes had gone. "Come on."

Dean grumbled but obeyed, coaxing the witchlight a little brighter so they could follow the black bird across the black sand.

" _Awk!_ "

Suddenly she took flight, vanishing into the dark.

"Hey!" The brothers raced after her, sand melting around their feet, ducking lower to avoid hitting the ceiling. They could hear her cawing somewhere ahead, as though goading them on. But no matter how fast they ran, she flew faster.

"Come on, Sam!"

Sam recovered from a stumble over nothing, depleted from a long night and the soft ground. He tried to catch up with Dean, whose breath came in gasps, just as weary. And then he cursed.

"Stop!"

Both did so suddenly, their feet slid out before them as though the sand had turned to snow on a frozen lake. They ended up on their rears, aware of how close they had come to running right over the edge of yet another fathomless pit.

They could no longer hear Agnes calling in the dark. Dean cursed again.

"That treacherous _bitch!_ "

Sam expected an echo. There wasn't one. He shivered.

"What now?"

Dean began to edge around the hole. It was roughly square, walled with dirt. "We can't go back."

"So jumping down another hole helps us...how?"

Turning away from the abyss, Dean scanned the surrounding emptiness. "Gets us away from whatever's after us, for starters."

"...Then I'm going first."

"Sam—"

"Dean." In one syllable Sam conveyed more meaning than he could have with a well-practised speech. So Dean shut his mouth, even if his instincts raged at him to pull his brother away from the hole and put him somewhere safe. Wherever that was.

Sam took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stepped off the edge.

Dean waited for all of two seconds. The last thing he heard before following his brother was the sound of something running at him. And then he was falling once more.


	35. Forest

***12:55***

* * *

~35~ Forest

Light. Fresh air. Frost on fallen leaves.

Dean sat up, eyes wide. He was surrounded by poplars, bark pale and puckered with age. A morning mist curled around them, between barren bushes. The ground was firm, brown leaves packed down by damp and preserved by ice. Through the branches above peered a grey sky, hinting the chance of snow.

He exhaled. His breath plumed. Cold nibbled at his fingers and the tips of his ears.

"Sam?"

His voice didn't sound his own. Almost muffled, on the other side of a window. He pushed himself to his feet. The world seemed to spin around him even though he stood still. Something moved through the trees.

"Hello?"

"Dean!"

He spun around, towards the voice.

"Over here, Sam."

His brother jogged over, leaves in his hair and clothes like he'd been rolling around on the forest floor. He was breathing too hard and looked too relieved to see him.

"Did we make it?" said Dean. "Are we out?"

"No," he gasped. "Dean, where _were_ you, man? I've been running around for ages!"

Dean frowned. "I haven't gone anywhere. I jumped down the rabbit hole right after you did."

Glancing around him, Sam then pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I can't shake it."

"Can't shake what?"

"The valkyrie."

He frowned. Sam pointed behind him, over his head. Dean turned, and recoiled.

Sitting on a branch too thin to hold its weight was one of the bird people. It looked just like the painting in the gallery. The size of a child, featureless, furless, with a long, beak-like face and a massive set of black wings. Countless mites swarmed over its leathery body, seeking the shelter of the wing feathers.

Even as they watched, another of the creatures soared overhead on silent wings, landing on a different tree. Then, in sync, both valkyries raised bony arms and pointed at the brothers, but made not a sound.

"That's all they do," said Sam, slapping his leg. "Just sit there and point."

Dean turned to his brother. Sam looked beyond stressed. Like he hadn't slept for days.

"Dude, how long exactly have you been wandering around?"

Sam's words shuddered a bit. "Dunno. Feels like hours."

"Hours?" Dean paled. "But..."

"I know."

"Then we..."

"Doesn't seem like it. But I guess there's no way of knowing until we find our way back to the house."

Dean looked around. "Is this the forest around the manor?"

"Not sure. Like I said, I've been wandering, and I haven't seen it." Sam took several deep breaths, until his chest stopped shuddering and his throat didn't feel so tight. Now that he had reunited with his brother, things didn't seem so bad.

"Dean, where's the gun?"

The question jolted his brother out of a reverie. Sam kept an eye on the ever watchful valkyries while Dean hunted around the surrounding foliage for the weapon that was probably of no use to them but a comfort all the same. A few moments later, there was a cry of triumph.

"Here she is." He emerged from the bushes, looking the weapon over. He rejoined his brother, looking up at the valkyries. Neither had moved.

"This is the closest they've been," said Sam softly. "They never get further away. Only closer."

"Should I shoot it?"

"...No. We don't have many shells left."

Dean lowered the gun. "Then I guess we just have to keep moving."

So they did, trying to ignore the bird people as they followed on the wing. But the hunters didn't get far before Sam stopped his brother with an elbow.

"Ten o'clock."

There was a hooded figure making its way through the trees, not looking left or right, head bowed as though following a trail of breadcrumbs. While the hunters had blundered through the woods like bears, the figure made not a sound at all.

Without asking each other, the brothers followed.

Their quarry didn't seem to hear them, even when they got close enough to make out the patterns on the cloak. They took it to mean they had stumbled across another memory.

Their assumptions were deemed correct when a branch snagged the figure's hood, pulling it off her head and exposing red hair.

"Angelina," said Dean.

Sam nodded. "Looks to be our age," he said, studying her face as she turned to untangle her cloak from the branch. And then he noticed something shiny cupped in her hand, held at waist height.

"Hey."

Dean had seen it too. He pulled the copper and silver leaf broach out of his pocket, given to them by Ariel. He moved closer to Angelina to compare them, and was certain it was a duplicate, if not the original.

She didn't look at them. They didn't exist yet. Nor did she take notice of the valkyrie in the tree over her head. When she finally got free of the branch, she turned away again, still staring down.

"Is she...following the broach?"

Dean shrugged. "Can't tell. Why else would she be holding it like that?"

Sam mirrored the shrug and started after her again.

Angelina stopped not long later, still staring down. It was with foreboding that the brothers joined her, as if they knew what they were going to find before they broke out of the foliage.

But their fears were unfounded, for she'd merely stopped at the edge of an iced mire. Here long grass had survived the frost, poking up between the leaves and frozen mud, not to be smothered.

Angelina pocketed her broach and looked around. Eyes falling on a low mound in the middle of the swamp, she stepped onto the ice, careless when the fragile crust shattered and the water beneath soaked into her boots. Upon reaching the mound, she pulled out a knife and sliced open her palm.

"Whatever you're about to do, don't do it, lady," Dean mumbled.

Heedless of his plea, she squeezed her hand in a fist, dripping blood into the earth, muttering in a language they didn't recognize.

At first, nothing happened. But then the ground began to shift. Grass curled away in a circle, exposing dirt that compacted into itself towards the sides of a rapidly growing hole. Rocks rolled away and roots snapped apart, flailing before being drawn back towards their home trees.

Finally, everything fell still. Angelina stood on the edge of a steeply sloped cave plunging into darkness. It looked natural, but it felt wrong. And not only because it had been hidden deliberately.

"It's like she knew exactly where it was," said Dean.

Sam shook his head. "Or not. It looked like she was following the broach, remember."

Dean grimaced. "What kind of pin can locate a cave?"

"...Maybe it isn't the pin itself. Maybe it's what it's made of."

Before they could discuss more, Angelina pulled something from her cloak and held it behind her back. An oval hand mirror, crafted in silver. And then she began to speak.

"I call to you, Ewah, prince of madness. Rise in spirit and heed my summoning."

"Don't do it," Dean half sang.

He might as well have told a television screen. Something appeared over the cave entrance, something shapeless that constantly changed its form. Sometimes it looked humanoid, other times it was a writhing mass of tendrils. But it remained darkly transparent. A projection of the demon trapped inside the cave.

"It has been...mmmany years since I have last lain eyes on this domain," said Ewah. Its voice was sexless. As it breathed, it make a croaking sound that sent shivers of dread down Dean's spine. The very sound he heard before he lost his eyes.

"Your language...it is unfamiliar to me."

"And your powers are strong," said Angelina, hiding her fear expertly, "if you have already gleaned it from my mind and become fluent in it."

"I have _many_ talents." Amusement now tinged its words. "You have awaken me, witch. If you are expecting a reward, you may find it isn't to your liking. If there'ssss one thing worse than being trapped in a cage for centuries, it's being awake to experience it."

"I know who you are and what you can do," said Angelina. "I wish to make a deal."

Both Sam and Dean groaned.

"A deal, you say?" The entity shifted its form, mirroring Angelina's image. "And why not ssseek out my kindred of the crossroads?"

"I am no fool," said Angelina, chest swelling. "I prize my soul over vengeance."

"Vengeance. How I would love to taste a bit myself."

"It's been many moons since your entrapment. Those who imprisoned you, your wardens, have long gone."

"Then what could you offer that could possibly interest me, witch?"

"Freedom."

It made a hiss like a crocodile. "Impossible."

"No prison is completely sound."

"...I'm listening."

"I know you already influence any living thing that passes through here," said Angelina. "I have seen the drooling wolves and maddened deer. Simple minds are affected merely by walking near your prison. And I can tell you're even more powerful than I supposed, if you were not doing this to them wittingly."

It chuckled. "I have that affect on people."

"No, not people. People have forgotten you, demon. You are nothing but a bedtime story... You are trying to take my mind even as we speak."

"I am bored, witch. Your language is ssslow and your intentions dull. Unless you have something worth saying..."

"As I said, I wish to make a deal," said Angelina tightly. "I want you to expand my abilities. In return, I will to tear away a layer of your prison."

"And what will that do?"

"In theory, you will have a further reach, not to mention a stronger one. You might have the power over a human. Manipulative. Malleable—"

"In theory? Might have? These are nought but sssspeculations, witch! Guesses! Assumptions! If they are wrong, you will walk away stronger and I will remain as nothing."

Angelina crossed her arms. "You have my blood, demon. I know what you can do with that."

The entity squirmed, gleefully sheepish. "As do I. So. You have given me the first round."

"A faith payment."

"You are desperate."

"I have ambitions," Angelina countered. "If I walk away now, I still have time to exact vengeance on my own. You will have my mind to play with, but at the end of the day, that is all you get. You will have no power over me otherwise, and if I wished it to be over, I could end my life and you couldn't stop me."

Sam nudged his brother, showing him his hand. Dean nodded. Both of them had cut their hands when they first arrived at Corvus Manor, Sam on the gate and Dean on the wall. George Firandez, too, had a hurt hand, and no doubt his friends did as well. It was how the demon caught their scents.

"Strange how you know so much about me," said Ewah. It made the croaking sound again, a cross between a dying toad and a creaky floorboard.

"You are a child of nature," said Angelina. "Eve is your mother. You take the name of demon even though you were never a human soul. You can possess, you can shapeshift, you can break a man's mind with a simple look into his eyes. You are unique in form but not motive."

"Go on."

"Why? You have already made your decision." Angelina paused. "What are you afraid of? Nothing can kill you."

"No." The monster became a mass of tendrils, oozing dark slime that dripped but never landed. "Sssso long as there is the realm of the unconscious, I will endure."

"Yes. Endure. You will exist, nothing more. You cannot even plant nightmares anymore. The ward I wish to break should be enough to allow you that much. To reenter the your true domain."

Croak. "You have no idea what I could... _do_ there."

"No. And I don't care. What you do with your freedom is your business."

"...Who is it you wishhh to exact vengeance upon, hm? Did someone steal from you? Rape you? If you do not tell me, I can pull it from your mind myself. And I can make it _hurt_."

Angelina's nostrils narrowed. "Atticus Corvus. He destroyed my family. He covered it up and pretended it never happened. My sister and I were left to starve on the streets while he remained fat and happy in his mansion."

"My heart _bleeds_ for you."

"You have no heart, demon."

"So let me guess. You took work in that mansionnnn...with the intention of returning the favour."

"Not quite." Angelina's eyes blazed. "I had my sister marry the younger son, believing that the elder son would become patriarch and continue the family bloodline. But he didn't. The fool got himself killed in a hunting accident."

"And you want me to haunt him in the afterlife?"

"No. I want to do it myself. I want to be able to do what you do."

The monster spat with laughter. Angelina's hand tightened around the hand mirror, still behind her back.

"Your body would not be able to handle such a _burden_. You are not one of the special ones."

"I am a witch," Angelina hissed.

"Yesss. And not a puny one either. But your physical form is not ssstrong enough. It could not handle the weakest of angels – let alone the power I wield."

Angelina's nostrils narrowed, and she stood up straighter. "Very well, demon. I will leave you to your prison. Enjoy your limitations—"

"I did not say I would not make a deal," said Ewah contemptuously.

"I'll bet you never had the ability to do what I want anyway," she retorted. "Just another monster of low ranking, a bottom feeder."

"You are trying to goad me into giving you mmmmore than what I am willing to give. It will not work."

"So you are willing to give me something."

The demon tilted its head. It had goat horns curling back over its humanoid skull. "I am. In exchange for the freedom to reenter the limitless realm of the subconscious, I shall grant you the skills of a psychic."

"And what will that entail?"

"You will be able to discern thoughts from auras and dreams, read lies and truths as easily as Scripture, and be able to impute your will in limited degrees to lesser minds. Perhaps, if I'm feeling generous, you will be able to create...a realm, if you will, in the plane of thoughts and memories where you could store every bit of knowledge you collect. In essence, you won't forget anything ever again."

Angelina seemed to think about it, but the two hunters already knew her answer. "Fine. Then we have an accord."

There was several seconds of silence.

"You must make the first move, _witch_."

She nodded, kneeling on the frosted ground, dropping the mirror where it was yet hidden from the demon. She began to dig, scooping up dirt with one hand as though it wasn't frozen.

Sam and Dean approached, eager to find out what she was unearthing. If they could put whatever it was back in the real world, perhaps it would reengage the ward Angelina sought to break.

Finally, she plucked out a rock the size of an egg, caked with dirt. She brushed it off, revealing the Cherokee characters painted on its sides. She rotated it, as though studying the markings.

"Dean—?"

"Yep." The elder Winchester pulled out the rock he had found in the well shaft cache. It looked identical to the one Angelina now threw into the trees.

It was a memory, but the brothers felt the explosion of energy that burst up from the cave. Angelina was blasted off her feet, landing in the swamp, and a torrent of darkness, similar to demon smoke, washed over her, entering her mouth, nose and ears, seeping into her skin. Her expression betrayed her pain and fear, and even after it was over, she did not get up.

So she didn't see what the Winchesters saw – a small, black-red blob crawling out of the ground. It was amorphous like the projection above the cave, with writhing black tendrils that immediately reminded Sam of the creature he had stepped on after it burst from Dean's eye socket, as well as the parasite that had been cut from his chest.

The thing inched across the grass towards the witch. It crept past her feet, hands, shoulders, stopping near her hair. There it climbed aboard, a parasite on an unwitting host.

Knowing what they did, Sam and Dean knew the demon had already broken the pact. It had given her the powers she wanted, but in doing so, allowed itself to take more freedom than it had been dealt.

Angelina got up, slowly, dazed. She said nothing more, walking off into the woods.

"Ssso. Now you know."

The brothers flinched, turning back to Ewah. Eyeless, it was facing them.

No. Impossible. They weren't really there. It couldn't _see_ them!

It began to laugh, a cold, croaky sound. And then invisible claws tore across their vision, tripping ragged gashes through the scene as though it were nought but a painting, and it felt as though they were rammed by a truck, sending them to oblivion.


	36. Panicking

***12:57***

* * *

~36~ Panicking

By the smell and feel, Dean knew he was back in the endless cavern below Corvus Manor, floored with black sand and inhabited by unknown creatures of the dark. He was lying on his front, his left arm asleep under his own weight. He rolled over.

"Sam?" His throat was so dry that clearing it did nothing. Sitting up took a great amount of energy, and he remained still for several seconds to recuperate.

He felt around. Touched the shotgun but did not pick it up. "Sammy." _Use the witchlight,_ _dumbass_ , he scolded himself, and he felt his pockets for it. He paused. It wasn't where he put it before. Patting himself down, he was both disappointed and confused when he pulled out something cylindrical. Disappointed because it wasn't the candle, confused because it was Sam's flashlight. He couldn't remember getting it from him.

"Sam?" He clicked it on, shining in every direction until he saw a motionless form several feet away. "Sam!"

He dragged himself across the sand to his brother, who was lying on his side, his back to Dean. He was breathing low and slow, soaked in sweat. Dean shook him.

"Wake up, man!"

Sam opened his eyes but they were unseeing. Breath escaped in thin gasps, and his mouth moved as though he were trying to speak. Dean noticed bile clumped the sand.

"What happened? Sam? Hey!"

He shook him, then rolled him flat onto his back, only to find the cause of his brother's distress. The wound below his collarbone was black and purple, swollen, with dark veins spreading out around it. The crossed cuts he had made were crusted with black and weeping. It wasn't infected in any normal sense, but infected it was.

"No, no no no!" Dean dropped the flashlight and grabbed hold of Sam's jacket, shaking him again. "Come on, Sam, fight it! We're almost there!"

A tutting in the dark. "Oh, that issss a pity."

Dean blanched, stomach clenching. He felt a presence behind him, but dared not look.

"So close, you were. So close. No one has ever gotten assss far as you. And to fail now..."

"Go away!" Dean barked. "Our time's not up. You can't touch us yet."

"Is that so?"

Something in the corner of his eye appeared, and he looked without thinking. Fortunately for him, it wasn't Ewah. It was the grandfather clock from the foyer, illuminated without anything to light it. It didn't cast a shadow.

The hour hand pointed straight up at the thirteen, the minute hand bearing in on it. The pendulum still swung at a slow speed, but it didn't seem to matter now.

"How ssssilly of me," said the formless voice. "You are correct. But I seem to recall your keepers of time moving faster than thissss."

With that, the pendulum returned to its normal pace.

 _Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock._

"No, stop!" Dean tried to slow it down again with mental will as they had before, but he couldn't focus.

"Why? You know it does not matter now. You were just thinking that."

"What are you waiting for then?" Dean snapped. "Show yourself. Make me cuckoo for cocoa puffs."

Something touched him near his eye, and he punched the air, sick with fear. The demon laughed.

"The lamb remembers. How did you like hosting my new form?"

"Go to hell."

"I can't."

With a snarl, Dean picked up the shotgun and sprang to his feet.

BAM!

He pumped the action and turned around. "Come on!"

BAM!

Again.

BAM!

He heard a chortle and turned towards the clock. A dark hand with long fingers disappeared behind it.

"Go on, then," a voice hissed behind his ear. "Tell me what you learned. Tell me what befell the noble housssse of Corvus."

A muscle jumped in Dean's jaw. "Give me time to."

"...As you wish."

 _Tick..._

 _Tock..._

 _Tick..._

 _Tock..._

Dean kept his eyes lowered, but focused on the edges of his vision, not at what he was looking at. Sam was just within sight on the left, but he dared not turn to him.

So how did it start? Angelina and her sister Ariel lost their parents because of Atticus. No, because of an incident, which was covered up by Atticus. Dean remembered the account book he found from 1822, which the old man had hidden. After finding the pages missing from it, he learned that a catastrophe at a work camp, followed by a sickness, had devastated the families staying there. Atticus had it all hushed up to protect his kin and his reputation. Angelina and Ariel were left with nothing.

"Well, lamb? I'mmm waiting."

"Angelina made a deal with you in order to get revenge on Atticus Corvus. She wanted to have more power, power similar to yours. To attack minds instead of bodies."

"Go on."

"You accepted the deal, gaining a bit of freedom in exchange for what she wanted. But you broke the deal as soon as the first ward was removed. You attached a part of yourself to her, like a parasite."

"I know this, morsel. You are...boring me."

Dean tried not to let his anger expose itself, eyes still on the sand near his feet. "With her new power, Angelina wandered off into the woods...and I'm guessing she stumbled across the lumber work camp where Ariel's son-in-law worked at. You attached to someone there and drove everyone in the camp insane." A newspaper clipping in another one of Atticus' account books told of the massacre that occurred there on March 18th, 1844. Gerald, the son-in-law, was the only survivor. But then he returned here, to Corvus Manor, only to drown his son.

But why take so long to kill the family? The camp had been killed in a few hours. All the Corvuses, save one, were killed over the course of two years.

"Insssightful of you," said Ewah blandly.

"But once you hitchhiked with Gerald to the manor, you didn't kill everyone right off the bat," Dean continued, thinking madly.

"And why do you sssuppose that was?"

"Because..." He paused. Perhaps he was thinking Ewah too much of a monster and not a demon. Although it wasn't a true demon, it had the nature of one, bloodthirsty and without integrity. Why kill everyone quickly when you could take it slow, savour the pain caused by encroaching madness, watch people forget their own names, see the horror on their faces when they realized a cage had been built around them, a cage with no door.

"Because you wanted to have fun," he said at last. He felt the displacement of air to his right. Kept his eyes down. "You scuttled around like a rat, poisoning minds here and there, but you didn't get to do much before Angelina caught you, did you?"

A crocodilian hiss. Still Dean did not lift his gaze.

"She trapped you underground, where you belong."

Ewah chuckled. "She thought it would be enouggghh to subdue me. But what the little cunt didn't realize is, it'ssss very difficult to kill a thought once it's been _planted_."

Something poked the back of Dean's head. He only just managed not to flinch.

"You made someone poison three kids, had Pastor Gregory murdered. You even had a horse eat a scullion."

"And how did I do that, if I was trapped in this hole?"

"You'd already infected the building, like mold. I'm guessing you spoke to people through the Collective Unconscious."

"Good, lamb, very good."

"You also drove ol' Uncle Ed insane by making eye contact with him, and he ate worms and dirt until his stomach burst. Right in the middle of his chess game too. Then there's Jack, Edward's brother, who hung himself in the gallery. Their sister Katrine was thrown from a crazy horse and died. At some point the fourth sibling met their end, as did all their rugrats, except one..."

Agnes. Agnes, who somehow escaped but was not innocent herself. Not possessed but infiltrated nonetheless, she cut the baby from Ariel's womb because...what did Sam say?

 _'She_ must be punished, and to punish her, you must feel pain.'

It was what Agnes told Ariel before attacking her with a straight razor and murdering the unborn child. But who? Who was to be punished?

Dean already knew. Who could it be other than Angelina, the one who had brought this upon the family. Her family. Once she'd figured out what was going on and tried to kill, banish or otherwise dispose of the demon, it got angry. But instead of going for her, it kept after her loved ones. That, Dean understood. He'd rather go to hell – again – than let anyone hurt his brother, and no doubt Angelina had felt the same. And Ewah knew it.

"...Anything else?"

Dean jerked out of his thoughts. "That's it."

"Well. I'mmm impressed." The untethered voice oozed sarcasm.

"So will you let us go?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand, lamb."

Dean's heart flopped. "We beat you. We discovered the secret."

"But there was no sssecret! Only unspoken truths."

"Whatever you want to call it," he growled. "We did what we were supposed to."

"You did—most—of what the _dead_ wanted you to do. This is not _my_ game. It's theirs."

When he remained in a stunned silence, a low, croaking chuckle hovered in the darkness.

"Dean," said Sam weakly. Dean didn't hear. He gripped the shotgun tightly and raised it, baring his teeth.

"Show yourself!"

"Dean..."

"Come on, Ewah! Ha! You call that a name? What are you, the fourth Power Puff Girl?" He felt movement near his arm and whirled around, jabbing with the butt of the gun. Meeting no resistance, he almost fell over.

"Who do you think you are?" the voice croaked, contemptuous.

He turned. It was dark. He couldn't see. "Haven't you heard of me? My name is Dean Winchester. I'm the one hiding under your bed."

Something grabbed his ankle, and he kicked it away before whirling around, only to find himself pointing the gun barrel between Sam's eyes.

He looked hollow in the faint glow of the flashlight, hand raised between his face and the gun. "Dean, stop."

"Get up, Sam. We'll fight our way out."

"Oh, it's too late for that, lamb."

Dean felt the words behind his ear and spun around again. Still he saw nothing.

"We've already made a deallll, Sam and I."

"What?!"

"Dean—"

He rounded on Sam, glaring fire. " _What did you do?!_ "

Sam remained sprawled in the sand, breathing as though he were pinned by a great weight. "I gave myself up...in exchange for one more hour."

Dean couldn't believe his ears. "When did this happen?"

"In the woods, before I found you..."

"So you lied."

"Not really. I just...didn't mention that part."

Knuckles white around the shotgun, Dean almost threw it away into the nothingness. " _Why_ , Sam?"

"What else could I do, Dean? I was finished the moment that monster poisoned me."

"But it had us anyway! Look at the time."

He could have sworn he sensed Ewah shaking its head, somewhere to his left. "I have you and _alllll_ that you are, and I have your brother's consciousness, his meatsuit to play with. But his sssoul..."

"I was possessed by an angel," said Sam weakly.

Dean sputtered. "You mean _Lucifer?_ "

"He's evil, I know, but bottom line, he's an angel. Meant my soul belonged to heaven."

"Rules are rules," said Ewah happily.

"And you gave that up?" Dean said incredulously.

Sam tried to get up. Failed. "It bought you an hour."

"And you're _wasssting_ it," the demon hissed. There was a gust of cold air, and suddenly the grandfather clock reversed, minute hand turning back until it returned to the peak, its smaller counterpart back at twelve.

"And when I say hour, I _mean_ an hour. No more of that mind over time nonsense." The clock vanished, leaving the flashlight in the sand the only source of illumination. It flickered.

"Fine." Dean barely contained his anger. He went to his brother, kneeling beside him and gripping his hand. "You're coming with me."

"I can't. You know I can't."

"Sam—"

"No, Dean. I'm too weak. Please. Just go. _Please_."

Dean hadn't heard him this beseeching since the day he had pleaded against Death returning his tortured soul – Lucifer's chew toy for an untold length of timed – to his body. Dean hadn't listened to Sam then, but he had to now.

The demon was right – he was wasting the most precious gift Sam could have given him. And he knew what he had to do.

He squeezed Sam's hand harder, looking towards where he had heard Ewah last. "If you lay a finger on him—"

A chortle. "I won't touch him. You have my _word_."

Back to Sam. "I'll get you out of this. I promise."

Sam nodded. "I know you will...Dean."

He crouched again. Sam handed him his knife.

"Give 'em hell."

* * *

Sam watched Dean until he could no more, when his strength gave out and he could no longer hold his head up. The sand was soft and he closed his eyes. No sense in keeping them open. All light was lost to him.

But he knew the demon had crept up on him, leaning in close.

"Let's have some fun, shhhall we?"

Eyes opened again. Teeth clenched. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

"You...you said..."

"I _lied_."

With speed that belied his weakness, Sam slashed the darkness with a silver knife, his last weapon. He felt resistance, heard another crocodilian hiss of annoyance as the demon retreated. But Sam remained still, a bird in a cave, eyes wide but unseeing. His heart pounded against his ribs loud enough for him to hear.

Something smacked against his hand, and the knife was gone.

"No—"

Something else struck his shoulder, knocking him onto his back, and then what felt like a massive paw stepped onto his chest, claws burrowing in. Hot breath and the stench of singed fur fell over him like a heavy quilt. Sam's eyes widened, the sounds of sniffing near his head.

"Ah, fear," Ewah rumbled. "The mind is so much more _alive_ with it. And there's always more to be had..."

* * *

Far away, too far to do anything, Dean heard the screams. Sam's screams.

"Sam!" He slipped in his efforts to turn around, barely catching himself before his face hit the sand. "SAM!"

He started running back when something caught his foot. This time he did fall, and he twisted around, kicking at the root-like tendril that had wrapped around his ankle. He could see more of them growing from the sand, hunting for him.

"Get off!" He hacked at his captor with Sam's knife until it recoiled, writhing and spraying putrid juices. When Dean got up, he was confronted by another unwelcome sight.

"You!"

"You can do nothing for him now," said Agnes. She was probably fifteen, several years older than she was when Dean last saw her in this form. But there was no mistaking those dark eyes and that glossy black dress. "Continue without him."

"Get out of my way!"

Dean tried to go around her, but suddenly she was in front of him again.

"You won't find him."

As she said this, Dean noticed the lack of footprints in the sand. He turned around, panning with the flashlight, thinking he'd lost his bearings completely. But there were none to be found.

"We must go," said Agnes. "It will come for you. And if it catches you, it will not let you get away. And your brother's sacrifice will be for nought. Come with me."

"Yeah? And why the hell should I trust you?"

"You shouldn't. But you have to. For the sake of us all, you have to." In the blink of an eye, she became a crow and took off.

Dean followed. For what choice had he but to obey.

Ω

"Why is the presence of this Dr Corrigan so important?" Detective Roberts snapped. It was the third time in five minutes Lilly had asked him to go get her and bring her _now_.

"I must add my confusion," said Garth. "What can an examiner do?"

Lilly's impatience seemed to aggravate her Parkinson's, making her shake all the more. "I don't know yet!"

"Something gave you an idea!" Roberts barked. "You know what? I'm through with this."

"Hey, where are you going?" said Garth.

"There's a bar down the road. I'll see you after one. Or three."

"Detective. Roberts, please—"

The door closed behind him.

"Let him be," said Lilly, sitting back down in a swivel chair, fiddling with her charm bracelet. "He'll only get in the way."

"Get in the way of what?"

"Everything. He's oblivious to the true extent of this and it's better for him if he stays that way."

Garth swallowed. "Do you know what's going to happen, Lilly?"

"No. But I have a bad feeling, and they're rarely wrong."

"...Then I'll go get her and wheel her here on a gurney if I have to."

Garth turned on his heel and left the examination room, marching the length of the hall to Dr Corrigan's office. At least, he assumed it was hers – it was the only one lit but the name on the door was Dr Steve Hobbs. When Garth knocked and opened the door, he saw that it was no Steve.

"Dr Corrigan?"

She was slumped over the desk, facing away from Garth. Struck with foreboding, he approached cautiously, aware of the gun in his holster and the lamp on the desk.

"Doctor?"

He poked her. She didn't respond. He gripped her shoulder and pulled her upright.

"Holy sassafras!" He release her. Her head thudded on the desk, lifeless.

Garth fumbled for one of his many cellphones with one hand, the other grasping the woman's wrist, checking for a pulse. He stopped before he could dial the detective.

"You're alive?"

He gripped her shoulder again, pulling her back into the chair. She was limp and her eyes were open, but she wasn't cold or stiff and her pulse was strong. He passed a hand before her face. She didn't blink. The engine was running but no one was home.

"Guess I better do what I said I would do."

Fortunately the chair had wheels so he didn't have to wrestle the examiner onto a gurney, and he pulled her out from behind the desk, aiming for the door. It was then he noticed something clenched in her hand. A black feather.

He decided not to touch it until he'd returned to the examination room, which he did in record time without sending Corrigan flying from the chair.

Lilly didn't seem concerned at the other woman's lack of functioning, simply gazing at her as though she were some interesting exhibit.

"Roberts spoke with her ten minutes ago, so something happened to her since then," said Garth, panting slightly.

"Nothing happened to her," said Lilly, getting up slowly and making her way over. "She did this to herself."

"What?"

"She's dreamwalking. See that feather? Be thankful you didn't touch it. I don't know what would have happened to her if you did. Or to you."

Garth swallowed. "I think I'm missing something. Dreamwalking? Don't you need African dream root for that?"

"That is one way. This is another. It was a lost art. _Is_ a lost art. No one alive should be able to do it."

"...Well _she's_ alive."

"And if my assumptions are correct, she shouldn't be."

Garth recoiled. "A revenant?"

"Relax, dear boy. When she wakes up, we'll ask her." Lilly glanced at the clock. "And she should be, before one o'clock. In the meantime, don't let anyone take that feather from her."

"Who's gonna take the feather from her?"

"Don't ask silly questions, and help me back to the chair. Come, come now, I don't have an eternity."


	37. Lure

**12:05**

* * *

~37~ Lure

Dean had no idea how he got back to the cellar. One moment he was running through the endless cavern, sand kicking up behind him, the next he was sliding to a halt before he ran headlong into the cellar wall.

He should have been relieved, but he wasn't. Something was...wrong.

At first he thought it was just the flashlight. Got some blood on the lens, giving the beam a rosy tint. But when he looked at it, it was clean. Then why did everything look so red?

And either the cellar had gotten bigger or he had gotten smaller. Neither made sense, leading Dean to the conclusion that Ewah was messing with him. Distracting him.

He turned about, expecting the demon to be there. Instead he caught a glimpse of black writing on the wall.

 _Don't look at him_.

"Well I already know that," Dean mumbled.

"This way."

He turned towards the stairs, saw no one. It had sounded like Agnes, but he tightened his grip on the shotgun as he ascended the steps, pausing on the landing. The wooden stairs beyond stretched at least three times further than they should, and the risers were gone, giving him an ominous view through to darkness.

He couldn't recall much about his childhood home, but remembered he was one of those kids with an inherent fear of the open basement stairs. Something was always waiting under there, ready to grab your ankle if you moved too slow.

 _Just go, Winchester!_

Dean took them three at a time, not because he was afraid, but because Sam's sacrifice, although utterly appreciated, had only given him an hour. Despite his haste, however, it took too long to get to the top of the stairway.

He was breathing hard when he slammed into the door, expecting it to burst open. He nearly tumbled back down as he rebounded.

"Oh, come on!" He put his shoulder to it and pushed with all his might. It was like moving a stone slab. Eventually he got it open enough to squeeze through.

"Y'call this fair?" he snapped. Nothing answered.

He looked around for his fickle companion, and with foreboding took note of the differences the house had taken.

He was still seeing red and objects were disproportionate. Everything far away was too small and everything near was too big. The floor curved but felt normal as he strode for the foyer. In the corridor, he found another message.

 _His eyes are many._

Dean didn't dwell, hastening on. He didn't notice a final change until he looked at the windows on either side of the front door.

The infernal fog, which had been swirling around out there since the beginning, was gone. All that was there now was darkness.

Dean approached the windows cautiously, shining the light through the glass. A rosy orb reflected back, but nothing seemed to be out there. He squinted—

Then leaped back as a hand slapped against the glass, dismembered and pale. It vanished.

Dean backed away. Best he didn't excite anything by remaining too near.

"Alright. Think, Dean, think! What did we miss?"

What information they had gathered hadn't impressed Ewah the slightest. Although he wasn't sure how telling the demon would have helped. It had been a faint, fractured hope that proving what they had learned would make them suddenly wake up, back in their own bodies. But that would have been too easy. No. Angelina wanted them to figure out how this all started, because in doing so, they would learn how to end it.

 _I must find her. She did this, and she's damn well going to put it right._

When he'd first woken up in that fourposter bed, alone in a random room on the second floor, he'd found a key and a note in the wardrobe. The key had given them access to the third floor. The note had read, Come find me. Then why the goose chase? Why misguide them with crap poetry and slow them with puzzles?

He shook his head. It didn't matter. All that mattered now was getting to the third floor. The most direct route was right in front of him. A dash up the foyer stairs, a short stroll towards the west wing, then up more stairs. He should be there in under a minute.

He knew it wouldn't work. But he'd be an idiot not to try.

Dean performed a quick pat down, checking his supplies. Flashlight. Walkie-talkie. Copper leaf broach. Sam's knife. Cleaver. Empty revolver. Ward stone from the well. Loaded shotgun. Two extra shells. And fifty-two minutes. Fifty-two minutes to solve the Corvus Manor mystery.

"Go."

He'd only made it up three steps when the hand shot out of the wall and seized him by the arm. It was so cold it burned, and he felt the intruding presence in his mind. Cursing, Dean thrashed, ramming the butt of the gun against the wall-arm's elbow. Bones snapped like winter twigs and it released him, and he tried to slip past it. But there were more.

The colour of the wood they stretched from, half a dozen leathery arms flailed from the wall and steps, those closest reaching for him with emaciated fingers. Dean traded shotgun for cleaver, and he severed hands from wrists in the effort to fight his way through. But no matter how many times he swung, new hands were always there, ready to grab him.

"Oh, come on!"

One grabbed his ankle. Another his knee. More and more got a hold of him, all vying for control, all desiring the lifeline tethering him to his body on Earth. Even the dismembered hands began to cling to him, climbing up his legs like mutilated spiders.

And then from the wall burst an entire head and torso, silent, mummified. There were only faint indentations of eyes, nose and mouth on its bald noggin, and it got right into Dean's face. Sand-paper hands grabbed him by the head, pressing against his ears, harder and harder until he thought his skull would be crushed.

Somehow he remembered the cleaver in his hand and he chopped through the spirit's wrists in one swing. It wailed and thrashed, and Dean took his chance to leap over the rail, tearing away from the other hands.

He landed with a thud, crouching to absorb the impact. When he straightened, he saw that the arms had all disappeared.

"I'm trying to _help_ you!" he snapped. Of course, there was no response.

It might have been the dead, or it might have been Ewah, messing with the constructs of the manor again. What he knew for certain was that he was going to have to use the other way to the third floor.

He'd used the servants' passage once, when he and Sam had gotten separated by a wall of bars and he needed an alternate route to get off the third floor. It was inside the walls, a quiet, discreet way for the servants to get around and perform their duties whilst remaining unseen. It was also a perfect place for Dean to get trapped. If the demon kept manipulating the house...

"Best not keep it waiting."

Dean turned left from the stairs, into the library. The endlessly tall shelves were still in there, as were the impossibly high stacks of books. Shining the flashlight up at them, he watched them swaying, slowly, back...and forth...and back...and forth...and back...and forth...and—

"Stop." He shut his eyes and forced his head down. This wasn't fair. This wasn't fair at all. He opened his eyes again. Another message had been scrawled on the floor.

 _Don't let him catch you._

He took it as his cue that he wasn't moving fast enough. Because he was pretty sure that message hadn't been there when he first entered the library.

"Then help me," he muttered. Nothing answered.

Not looking at the books, he continued on to the music room, pushing the double doors open.

It was as how the brothers had left it, hours ago. The smashed piano, demolished furniture, the scattered sheet music and the trio of cellos on the dais before great bay windows.

He panned the flashlight across the room, only then noticing that the red tint from before was gone. But the windows were still dark and he had the horrible suspicion that something was in this room.

Then, crying. It was soft and pitiful, and hauntingly familiar.

"...Sam?"

There he was, in the far right side, opposite the windows. He was a pillar of dark, facing the corner, weeping softly. The flashlight caught the ominous stains on his jacket.

Sam got away from the demon! Or perhaps it thought things would be more interesting allowing the brothers to work together. Whatever the reason, Dean would take it.

He crossed the room towards him, light fixated on his back. "Hell, man, you had me worried... Sam?"

Dean was now feet away. His brother did not turn around. He kept his head bowed, hands at his sides, a child sent to the corner. And he was still crying. Why was he crying?

Dean's skin crawled. But he kept approaching.

"Sam, hey..." He reached out to touch his brother's shoulder, and—

"Dean." Sam spun around so fast Dean never even saw his face before he was enveloped in a strong, desperate embrace.

He had no idea what could have shaken him like this, so Dean just held him, like he used to when John wasn't around and little Sammy had had another nightmare. He was trembling, each breath a shudder, crying over Dean's shoulder until...until...

A low, reverberating chuckle. Dean stiffened as Sam drew back. He just caught a glimpse of the lower half of Sam's face, which was split in too wide a smile with too many teeth.

"Fooled you."

A thousand needle teeth bit into Dean's neck, and he had no chance to scream before his throat was ripped out, blood spraying over the walls, gushing hot over his hands as he fell to his knees—

He jerked awake, a ragged gasp filling his lungs. He was lying on his side on the floor of the foyer, flashlight and shotgun just within view.

"What...the...?"

Sitting up, Dean looked around. He was back where he started, not bleeding out, not dying. He felt his neck. It was sore but the skin was not broken.

"Okay. Second chance. Awesome." He stood, scooping up the gun and light, scanning his surroundings once more before going through the library again.

Ignoring the temptation to look at the swaying books, he paused at the door of the music room.

Yes. There was the soft weeping again. Sam's soft weeping. Only it wasn't Sam. And there the pretender was, back in the corner, as though nothing had happened.

It was like a video game. And Dean had used up one of his lives. How many did he have? Or was the penalty simply a loss of time?

He didn't even want to consider the consequences of his first mistake; if his body on Earth was alright or if it was already dead, leaving him nowhere to go once he beat the demon. For one thing, it was a waste of time. For another, he could do nothing about it anyway.

He stepped into the room, flashlight fixated on the thing that looked like Sam. It continued to weep as he cut across the dance floor, making straight for where he knew the door of the servants' passage stood hidden. He just had to get there without attracting the thing's attention. He was half way—

 _Creeeeek._

"Dean."

Crap.

Pounding feet. Dean saw a flash of teeth and stitched-shut eyes but was already fleeing, unsure whether if the thing could be hurt with a shotgun blast and not convinced he could shoot it in the dark. But before he could figure out where the hell he was going to run to, he passed over the threshold and the pounding stopped.

His instincts urged him to keep running. He ignored his instincts. He stopped and turned, shining the light on the monster's retreating back. It seemed to ignore him, until he stepped into the room again, foot scuffing the transition strip. It started to turn but Dean backpedalled, pressing the lens of the flashlight against his body.

He listened as the thing returned to the corner, and resumed its crying.

"So either it thinks I'm stupid or it is," he muttered.

But what was catching its attention? The light? Sound? Both?

There was no time to test it. If this was to be the first in a line of challenges, he was off to a bad start. He was, however, willing to bet the thing was sightless, if its sewn eyelids were anything to go by.

Still, he turned off the flashlight.

 _Hello, darkness, my old friend..._

He was blind again. Blind as the moment the demon sucked out his eyes. Already he felt his other senses rev into overdrive. The crying seemed louder, and no matter which way he faced, he could zero in on its source, could sense its exact location.

 _Get moving._

One hand on the wall, Dean kept a light step while still moving as quick as he dared. For that was another potential trigger – time spent in the creature's territory. He passed a bookshelf and a row of chairs, careful not to bump anything. And then his fingers brushed over an alabaster bust he knew was in the corner.

 _Yes! Now just a bit further._

He walked a few metres along the next wall, knowing he was heading straight for the monster. But somewhere along here would be a lever – a fake book on one of the shelves, or a pressure plate in the baseboard moulding. Something to open the hidden door.

But he couldn't possibly find it in the dark. He pulled out the flashlight – which snagged on a shotgun shell, making it tumble out of his pocket and hit the floor.

"Dean."

 _Dammit, no!_

He threw caution to the wind, turning and bolting for the exit, light beam flailing about. The skin on his back crawled with nerves and he almost tripped over his own feet. He knew the thing had been inches from seizing him when he ran over the threshold, but as before, it stopped chasing him and slowly walked back to the far corner.

Dean's heart beat so fast he felt ill. He took several deep breaths, quelling the building frustrations. He couldn't let them govern his actions. They would only get him caught quicker.

"Hey, you," he said to the air. "I need help."

He waited ten seconds. Twenty. Gritting his teeth, Dean prepared himself for another attempt.

 _Wait, Dean,_ a voice whispered in his head. It sounded like Sam. _You're alone. It might not know that. You need..._

"A distraction."

Dean stood in the library but leaned forward, casting the flashlight into the music room. He could throw something when he got close to his target, get the monster to the other side of the room. But if it discovered his ruse, he would be trapped. And with only seven shells left, the thought of shooting the thing was even less appealing.

 _Or I could knife it,_ he thought. _Get it while its back is turned._

 _No, Dean. They said don't let it catch you._

 _I won't let it catch me._

 _Don't do it._

 _Fine_ , he grumbled inwardly, uncaring that he was arguing with a mental figment.

Shining the flashlight over towards the bay windows, he spooked himself from the shadows cast by the trio of cellos, leaning in their stands. He scowled and went to look away, only to be struck with an idea.

Keeping the flashlight aimed at the dais, he followed the wall towards the bay windows this time, avoiding potentially squeaky floorboards closer to the middle of the room. It was a tentative journey, and he knew he was taking too long. But if he went any faster, his chances of being caught heightened, and he would lose even more time.

Finally, he made it to the dais without squeaking a single board, and he stepped onto it, making his way to the cello trio. He was careful not to bump the next in line as he sat down beside the first, taking up the bow in one hand and the neck of the cello in the other.

He set the bow to play before remembering what had happened when Sam did it, only a few hours ago.

"Don't hold me here," he said softly but firmly. And then he drew the bow across ancient strings.

It squealed and he froze for only a heartbeat before trying again, not pressing so hard. Out came a rich hum.

"Dean."

It took all of his willpower to not leap up and flee right then and there.

 _There's time. There's time!_ He gently released the bow and cello, stepping away from the instrument as it took up a tune by itself. There were the pounding footsteps of the monster, getting closer and closer as Dean slipped off to the side, conscious of the exit, setting his feet down as softly as possible.

When he left the room, he shone the flashlight towards the humming cello. And there the monster was, facing it, motionless.

The familiar shape of his brother clashed with the knowledge that it wasn't his brother at all. Dean shuddered and turned to follow the wall in the other direction, towards the hidden door. He could move faster with the music masking his footfalls.

When he got there, he found the dropped shotgun shell and pocketed it before pausing and listening. The cello was still playing and he couldn't hear the monster. But the problem still remained – he had no idea how to open the door from this side. He could feel it, the crease forming a rectangle in the wall, and he knew it swung out into the room, hinged on its left side.

Despite believing the monster blind, Dean kept his fingers over the flashlight lens so it only emitted a faint, peachy glow. About as helpful as a glow stick but it was all he could risk.

 _Hurry, Dean, hurry..._

Brushing his hand over the striped wallpaper, he felt a string at the exact moment the cello's song ended, and silence fell.

He had no idea how the thing heard him, but the only sounds were those pounding footsteps, rushing towards him.

Dean yanked on the string, felt the mechanism on the other side disengage. The door popped open and he slipped through. He didn't need to close it – the monster slammed into it in its haste to rip him in two.

 _Blam!_

Blam!

BLAM!

Silence. Dean released a breath he didn't realize he was holding and his head cleared. He knew he was scared, but not _that_ scared.

"So not cool." He turned his back on the door, shining the flashlight about.

He was at the end of a narrow corridor, lined with sections of brick and lathe and rough, wooden beam supports. Going forward would take him past the library and then, after a turn, end with a door that would open to the staff quarters, if it hadn't been boarded up. Before that was a staircase that made a stop on the second floor and then continued to the third. When he'd first come through here, most of the doors leading to various rooms had been sealed off. There was precious little space to run if Ewah decided to toss something in here with him.

 _Then let's hope it didn't._ Steeling himself, Dean soldiered on.


	38. Hidden

**12:22**

* * *

~38~ Hidden

Dean hurried through the walls like a rat. The narrow space seemed to squeeze in the further he went, but his shoulders never grazed the bricks or lathes even when he resisted the urge to advance with his body angled.

 _They aren't closing in,_ he thought. _They're not._

 _Hurry._

There was that voice again, the little voice Dean imagined sounded like Sam. Perhaps it was the guilt. He did, after all, surrender his golden ticket out of this dump, trading his Grace-infested soul to give Dean another hour to find Angelina.

 _Come on, come on. Yes!_

Here the walls were a little wider to accommodate the staircase, but he did not pause to relish the space. He took the steps three at a time, flashlight barely illuminating them ahead of his feet.

At first he didn't notice the water. It dripped only in a few spots, trickling down the brickwork. But then the wooden steps seemed to be getting darker, and when he slowed, he realized it was because they were soaked.

 _Doesn't matter. Keep going._

Dean's legs were burning by the time he got to the second floor. Exhaustion had caught up to him a long time ago and was now doing donuts around him. But he soldiered on, aiming for the next set of stairs to get to the third level. But, as he suspected, they were no more. Three steps led up to a solid brick wall that could not have there before because he'd used this passage already. The demon wasn't going to let him get to the third floor so easily.

It smelled of wet brick and rotting wood. Wrinkling his nose, Dean made for the nearest door, which opened with resistance to the second floor hallway. And so was revealed the source of the water; it dripped from the ceiling and puddled on the floor, as though the entire next level had flooded. He curled his lip, unsettled.

"Awesome." He turned left, to see a corner turning out of sight. He knew beyond that was where the kids' bedroom was, where he and Sam took catnaps and had enjoyed a few nightmares. Across from him was a study, and further along to the right was the toy room. Neither had anything dangerous, but the room a couple doors down had not been so harmless. So it was with caution that he approached it, shoes tapping through the water, preventing all hope of a silent advance.

He almost stepped on Agnes before she squawked at him, flapping out from under his feet.

Dean tried to mask his emotions at the unwelcome sight. Agnes might have helped them on more than one occasion, she had also murdered Ariel's unborn child back in the day, driving the woman to suicide. Sam thought it was because of Ewah's influence, but then why was Agnes the only one to escape the manor and the fate of everyone else?

The crow pecked at his shoelace, then strutted down the hall a few feet, turning to go into the one room Dean wanted to avoid.

"Fat chance," he muttered, aiming to ignore the day room and its dimension-jumping, monster-making mirror.

 _But what if she wants to show you something?_

 _I don't want to see anything she has to show me._

 _Dean—_

 _Fine!_ He had to turn abruptly on his heel in order to go back to the entrance of the day room. Figment Sam was even more annoying than the real one.

The space was as he remembered it, only wet. Agnes was gone again and he could only think of how he was wasting time.

 _Look around._

His quick scan wasn't enough to impress himself or his brother's voice, so he stepped in further, checking the walls for messages or any other clues that might help him locate Angelina. His doubt continued to hinder his enthusiasm until he inadvertently glanced towards the mirror of the vanity dresser.

Here was where Sam transported himself to the past, learning the fates of a few of the Corvuses and unlocking the door to the kids' bedroom. It was also where, he suspected, a monster copied Sam's image in order to get close enough to Dean to attacked him. From where he was standing now, he could just see part of his arm. But there was something weird—

Hands pushed him in the small of his back, their tiny size belying the adult strength, and he staggered in front of the mirror. Before he could stop himself, he looked at his reflection.

It was just him. But it wasn't him. His twin was scowling back at him, but instead of a canvas jacket and holey jeans he was wearing a full-out butler uniform, complete with neck brace and coattails. He wasn't holding a gun or a flashlight. Dean swallowed.

"S'up, Jeeves?"

He blinked, then his reflection blinked – a second too late. He recoiled, it did not. Instead, it smiled, and Dean noticed that its eyes had become mirror orbs.

"Crap."

Before he could do anything, his reflection pulled something out from behind its back. A hand mirror. It set it down on the vanity top, and then there was another one on Dean's side. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. When he could see again, his reflection was as it should be.

"Trippy—"

The vanity mirror broke, spiderwebbing across its entire face, and he jumped like a cat. He put a hand to his chest, gasping, feeling foolish. Cheap jumpscares.

"Glad you weren't here to see that, Sammy."

 _Aren't I?_

It was a stray, uncontrolled thought. Dean shook his head, making a mental note to stop listening to Figment Sam. A note which Figment Sam immediately scratched out.

 _You're gonna get yourself killed. Pick up the mirror._

Dean looked at the handheld tool, then picked it up, telling himself that he wasn't taking orders from a voice inside his head. When he looked into it, nothing seemed abnormal.

"What are you for?"

 _Beats me._

Dean pocketed it. If there was one thing he learned from the place, it was to not shrug off something like this. With one more scan about the room, he returned to the hallway.

Agnes had disappeared again, though he knew not what to make of that. He looked left, then right, flashlight picking up glistening water droplets dripping from above. When one landed on his forehead, he felt its weight but no dampness.

He faced left again and continued down the hall. That way to the only other stairs leading up to the third floor. Surely the demon wouldn't be a spoilsport and block it as well...

When the fog had hovered outside the windows, at least there had been a hazy light to help see further ahead. But the black that had replaced it restricted Dean's vision to the small flickering orb of the flashlight, rendering his surroundings unrecognizable. He kept an eye out for anything familiar, but even the paintings were different. He paused at one of a mingle of agonized faces, tortured souls in some forgotten hell. One he would join if he didn't haul ass. So he started to haul ass, only to have to hit the brakes again at the sound of a low moan.

It was feminine, somehow pained and seductive at the same time. Closing his eyes, once more he utilized his practised hearing and pinpointed the source. It was but ten feet ahead of him, just outside the reach of his light. He stepped forward and saw two things at once.

One was a single word slapped on the floor. _Run_.

The other was what he should be running from. It looked like a corpse that had been starved, skinned and then scorched. Saturated and definitely female, she was writhing on the floor, sounding less like she was in physical pain and more like she had experienced emotional agony but didn't know how to cope.

Then Dean made his next mistake. He took a step closer.

The thing screamed and started _slithering_ towards him. Face down, pushing herself with her feet, she quickly got between him and the beam of light, into his personal bubble. Dean leaped back, shotgun coming up. In his panic he dropped the flashlight but he knew he had a line on her.

BAM!

There was a burst of sparks that briefly lit her blackened, emaciated face, and she shrieked in fury as it was blasted with pellets. At that range it should have blown her head clean off, but instead Dean felt knife-like claws tear across his thigh. He cried out and jumped back. But she was behind him and cut open his calf. He spun around, trying to use his hearing to pin her down. She was too fast, and he was forced to turn again and again until he couldn't remember which way he was facing. He kicked and he punched but every time he did he felt another wound split open his legs.

 _Get out of there, Dean!_

He obeyed, managing to step on some part of extra-deep-fried Lady Wolverine as he bolted. She screamed and pursued with unnatural speed. Not knowing which way he was going, Dean had no idea he was about to—

 _Watch out!_

He slammed into the wall, rebounding and falling on his ass. Stunned for only a moment, he got up and turned right to continue following the hall, guessing correctly that he had returned to the east wing and was now approaching a dead end.

 _Faster!_

If Ewah hadn't manipulated the hallway and if Dean was remembering correctly, the end was right about...

He had slowed enough that when he hit the door to the kids' bedroom, he didn't bounce off as hard. He pushed the door open, whipped around it and slammed it shut in the monster's face. He could hear her clawing around out there, ripping the door apart.

Gasps of three little girls, somewhere in the darkness. He turned, picturing the layout of the room. Long and narrow, a closet at the far end and beds along either wall. The kids were somewhere in the middle.

"It's Mrs Kenningsworth! Hide!"

The sounds of running feet. Dean stepped back towards the door as one pair came at him, but then a tiny, freezing hand grasped his, tugging on it. "Come on! If she finds you, she'll drop you in the well! Or make you eat raw fish brains!"

He staggered forward, wary despite knowing the beds were not in his way. He also knew they were too small to crawl under, and the footlockers weren't exactly roomy either.

 _Hide._

 _I know what I'm doing, Sammy._

 _Closet._

Closet. He knew where that was. The ghost girl's hand disappeared but he didn't need her guidance. One hand before him, he trotted several feet before hop-shuffling blindly the rest of the way down the long room, stopping once his hand felt wood. He yanked the closet open and slipped inside, pulling the door shut.

Mrs. Kenningsworth, whoever she'd been, proceeded to tear at the bedroom door. Dean could see nothing, but it sounded like she was having troubles. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, she gave a final screech, and silence fell.

Still Dean waited, listening for her, for the girls, for anything. Then, if one could jump from a thought, he did as he heard the voice in his head speak.

 _She's gone._

 _You don't know that._

 _She's gone._

And suddenly, he believed him. It. Whoever it was. From what he remembered of Sam's nightmare, the thing that was Mrs. Kenningsworth vanished after he hid in this closet. Sam had then proceeded to converse with Lucifer so it was best if Dean left and went on his way...

It was nerve-wracking, crossing the long room again and listening at the door. There was nothing out there, only the low moans of the house, the drip of water. Opening the door, he put a hand to the wall and made his way back down the corridor, eyes straining to catch a glimpse of light.

When he got to the corner, he looked down the long stretch, which went all the way to the west wing. His gristly encounter had been near the balcony overlooking the foyer, he knew, which meant the flashlight was somewhere near there. If he kept his hand on the right wall, he would eventually feel it disappear and he would know he was at the balcony.

Why he couldn't see the flashlight now unnerved him, but he figured that it would just need a tap to get it going again. Unless it had landed in a puddle and was dead.

 _Nope. It's not dead. It's_ not _dead._

Suddenly, the wall to the right disappeared and he veered away from that side, just in case he misstepped and took a nasty tumble down the stairs. Besides getting a few more bruises with the potential of being ripped apart by dismembered arms, he would have to get past Sam's doppelganger again and there just wasn't time for that.

Arm out, Dean touched the wall to his left and swept his foot back and forth, advancing bit by bit. In his haste he nearly kicked the flashlight into oblivion. Kneeling, he picked it up, clicking the button a few times.

 _Come on, baby._

He rapped it against the palm of his hand, again and again, and it flickered to life.

 _Yes!_

He made a full turn, but saw no danger. The word 'run' had bled into the puddles of water, creating a red, meaningless smear. There was nothing left to run from. Here, anyway. But his and his brother's problems had not ended after emerging from the kids' bedroom hours previously, anymore than they had ended after going through the music room or defeating the mirror man.

 _Getting a nasty feeling about this pattern_ , he thought.

 _You and me both._

 _Stop it!_ Dean closed his eyes and shook his head. He wasn't speaking to Sam. He wasn't! And Sam wasn't speaking to him. Dean was only torturing himself. For all he knew, it was Ewah, screwing with his mind.

 _It's dark here, Dean. Just hurry._

He bit his own tongue, just to distract himself. But walking was painful enough, the wounds he'd sustained not deep but impossible to ignore. At least they kept him vigilant, and he marched to the door with the knob at chest height, pulling it open and gazing up the stairway.

 _Almost..._


	39. Found

**12:27**

* * *

~39~ Found

Upon opening the door at the top of the stairs, Dean was where he needed to be. Yet not where he needed to be. The rosy walled hall stretched left and right, the flashlight too weak to penetrate the darkness and expose its secrets. Going left meant returning to the conservatory or the gallery, going right brought him back to the trophy room and attic. Only four points of interest on the entire third floor. At least, this construction of it.

But he was on the right track – the creeping black red tendrils of Ewah's influence grew out of every crack in the floor, walls and ceiling like veins, reeking of rotten vegetation and writhing in the light. He stepped on them carelessly as he went a little right, then a little left, indecisive.

When he and Sam had first come here, it was an endless maze of narrow halls and empty rooms. They had explored the west wing, finding the door with blazing Cherokee symbols, but, unable to open it, they'd left, believing that they could return to it later. When they tried, the third floor looked like as it did now.

"So how do I switch it back?"

He thought about making a quick run through the available areas one more time, in case they'd missed something before. Angelina was up here somewhere, and if she was hiding, she could be in any of the many bedrooms that otherwise had been of no help. But there was no time for that. Dean had half an hour to find her and break Ewah's hold over his created realm or he and his brother were damned, just like the rest of the Corvus crew.

Without further thought, Dean turned on his heel and made for the west wing. That's where the door was before, even if the interior design was drastically different.

But following the hall only got him to the end, standing below the trapdoor to the attic. No more doors had opened, and a quick glance into the bedrooms had revealed nothing new. He'd just wasted more time.

Dean kicked the wall, teeth bared, and he turned to go the other way. But before he could, he heard thuds from overhead. Footsteps.

He looked up as though he could see through the ceiling into the attic. It had been empty before. Hadn't it?

Dean turned, staring up, following the sounds as they passed over his head and approached the trapdoor. A louder _thud_ made him flinch. Then nails scratched at the door.

 _Nope. Nu-uh. Not now._

He whirled around and sprinted all the way down to the other end of the hall, telling himself that he was running _to_ the east wing, not _away_ from Bede. If that was in fact who was wandering around up there. No time for monster fighting.

Dean ignored the short hall leading to the conservatory, a hunch telling him that the gallery was next on the list. But his hunch was given a kick in the pants upon his arrival – Ewah's roots had curled and coiled around the door handles, and by their size and numbers, Dean knew he wouldn't be able to get through.

Was Ewah doing this because it knew that's where Dean had to be? No. So far the demon hadn't outright made it impossible for him to get anywhere. It was having too much fun dicking with Dean to end the game that quickly.

Biting his lip, Dean pulled the walkie-talkie out of his jacket and hit the talk button.

"Garth. Come in, Garth."

Hiss. Sputter. Garble.

"Garth, I need your help, man."

Spit. Cackle. Hiss.

With controlled calm, Dean clipped the device to an inner pocket again.

 _Go back._

 _Quiet, Sam. You're not real._

 _Go back. Try the stair door again._

Dean had the same idea moments before Figment Sam had said it. Was that of his own cognitive processes or did Sam plant it?

 _Stop it, stop it, stop it!_ Dean closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, imagining a dog chomping on the thoughts, whipping its head back and forth until they ripped apart. And then he ran, as though to leave the shreds behind, returning to the stairs and closing the door behind him. There, he paused.

He was breathing hard. His vision swam and he felt weak in the knees. He was getting too tired too quickly. He was dying.

Closing his eyes, Dean inhaled, held it, then exhaled, willing his heart to slow. He wiped his hands on his jeans and opened the door again.

Same normal hallway. He closed the door, waited, and then opened it. Same pink walls and stained ceiling. Close. Pause. Open. Same, same, _same_.

 _Easy, Dean, easy._

He realized he was squeezing the door knob so hard his arm was shaking. Or maybe he was shaking from rage, or exhaustion, or both. His teeth ached from clenching his jaw. He also realized that the soothing came not from his own thoughts, but Sam's voice.

 _Listen to me. Remember what this place is. Remember what it's made of._

He tried to push the voice away again, but it pushed back.

 _You know what to do. Stop fighting me and go through that door!_

"SHUT UP!" Dean punched the wall, fist busting through plaster.

Sam did shut up. And suddenly, Dean felt as though his brother had been right there the whole time but had walked away, leaving him alone. Pulling his hand from the wall, he leaned his arm on it instead, brow on his wrist, staring at the steps.

It was Ewah. It wasn't Sam. Couldn't have been Sam.

Pushing from the wall, Dean squared off with the door, glaring at the rose-pattered knob as he envisioned the darker construction of the third floor. He recollected every detail, from sights to sounds to smells, the emotions he'd felt when exploring as well as being pursued through its halls. He mapped the memory and, as he'd done when slowing the grandfather clock, pushed his will at it.

 _You're gonna change back. When I open this door, you will be as I need you to be._

He grasped the knob, inhaled, and pushed it open.

The elation Dean felt upon his success was warped into dread as he beheld the narrow, dark corridors that would forever haunt his dreams. The cracked plaster walls, uneven floors and the faint stench of old meat. At least before, he'd had Sam to watch his back. Now not even Agnes kept him company.

He knew where to go. Right, to the west wing. But he looked left, ears straining for sounds below the ambience, knowing there were at least three hostiles wandering around up here. He had to move fast, but not in a panic, quietly yet without hesitation. This was going to be fun.

Upon setting out, Dean decided that walking was no different from running when it came to noise. No matter where he stepped, be it in the middle of the hall or near the walls, the boards creaked and moaned. This house was perpetually screwing him.

He paused at a familiar landmark – the wall of bars that had separated him from Sam, nearly getting them both killed. The hole he'd used to get through before was still there and he squeezed through, to behold the three routes he could take. The mouth of the labyrinth.

"Any one of you sons of bitches wanna piece of me?" Dean hefted the shotgun, one hand on the trigger, his other wrist propping up the barrel as he aimed the flashlight down each hall, scowling a challenge into the shadows. Nothing took him up on the offer, so he turned his focus to the walls, seeking the etches his brother had made to mark their progress. Remarkably, they were still there.

"Thank you, Sammy."

It wasn't perfect, but he would be able to avoid dead ends and loops in his quest to find the marked door. Forward was a no go, which narrowed his options down to two. He went right, north according to his mental map of the manor.

Left. Right. Forward. Left. Backtrack. Right. Dean had no idea how long he'd been running when he found himself skidding to a halt before a dead end. Frowning, he returned to the junction, looking again at the marking on the wall. He glared at an arrow and set of stairs that had been drawn below a missing chunk of plaster that almost eliminated the large X Sam had made before.

An icy spider crawled down his spine. Moving to another hall, he saw that the arrow there was now pointing in both directions. He followed the corridor to another intersection and turned left. There, several X's and arrows were drawn in. Looking right, a smear of black paint drowned any marks that might have been there.

Something was messing with Sam's breadcrumbs, and he didn't need three guesses what.

"Awesome." He peered down each corridor, deciding. Then he decided there was no time for deciding, as it didn't matter which he chose. He couldn't trust the marks and the longer he held still, the more likely something would find him.

And in that moment, something did. A sharp chattering pulled the beam of light down the hall to the left. The light flickered. Something lean, gangling and pale appeared out of nowhere. Dean recoiled. Whatever it was, it used to be human. Naked and hairless, bloodied bandages were wrapped around its head and face, only teeth proving it had any features at all. They made the chattering sound. The thing twitched violently as the light touched it.

Dean grimaced, lip curling, and then noticed its left arm. Instead of a hand it had a long, sharpened point. He knew who it was.

"Hello, Bede."

It hissed.

"You hurt Sammy earlier. And you know what they say: mess with the bull..." Dean raised the shotgun. "You get his big brother."

Bede shrieked and leaped into the air, all four limps clinging to either wall. Dean dropped the flashlight to hold the gun properly.

BLAM!

The burst of sparks was like a camera flash, giving him a glimpse of Bede's exploding head and chest. Doused in darkness, he felt hot spatter spray over him.

"Ugh, gross." He went to wipe it off, only to frown. He picked up the light and looked at his arms. What he thought had been blood and guts were actually globs of solidifying wax. He aimed the light at what remained of Bede the outcast, the dweller in the attic. It was half a torso and a pair of spidery legs, the rest of him spattered all over the walls. No blood. Just wax.

"Like your dolls." Dean took a moment to peel the substance from his face and neck, then turned and went down another corridor at a run.

He didn't slow at the next junction, turning right, then left, then right again. He heard breathing that was not his own but ignored it. Thuds sounded against the floor, as though someone were knocking from below. Ignored it. A door slammed shut just as he got near. Ignored that too. He only slowed when he felt air blast from behind, glancing over his shoulder to see that a wall had materialized, blocking the way back. Which was okay. There was no going back.

He'd long since lost track of time, lost his bearings, lost himself in the endless maze. But he didn't lose heart, and was rewarded for that with a break in the pattern.

At first he thought it was because he was slowing down from exhaustion, but then realized the corridor was just _long_. He didn't remember it from before but took it as a sign that he was going the right way. Reinforcing his belief was the heightened smell of rotting vegetation.

" _Awk_!"

Dean flinched as a crow flew ahead of him, wingtip brushing his ear.

"Stop...doing that," he gasped.

" _Awk!_ _Awk_ _-_ _awk_ _!_ " Agnes sounded frantic, somewhere in the darkness ahead. And Dean found out why a moment later, when a familiar croaking sound rippled just behind him. Somewhere, deep within him, he found a reserve of energy and he surged into a sprint. The flashlight beam was a whip, lashing with each pump of his arm. The walkie-talkie hit his side again and again and again, until the clip slipped loose, the device cracking against the floor behind him. He cursed but did not slow.

The door. He could see it! Faintly glowing orange, there was no mistaking the Cherokee symbols emblazoned all over it, getting brighter as Dean neared. But it was taking forever to get there, the corridor stretching on ahead no matter how fast he ran.

Something snagged his foot. He flew forward, gun and light shooting out before him as he tried to catch himself. Skin evaporated from his palms, mouth and nose smashing against the floor and sending a jolt through his jaw, into his skull, nearly knocking him unconscious. He couldn't suck in breath, diaphragm locked, but before he could roll over to fight for air, hands grabbed him, turned him over. They were firm but gentle. Dean screwed his eyes shut, a child in a bad dream.

"Are you alright, Dean?"

 _Dad?_ He almost opened his eyes. Almost. He caught the smell of mint gum, barely masking the booze breath Dad had at the end of a particularly trying case, or on Mom's birthday. Fingers, coarsened by callouses and pitted with scars, touched Dean's face, gently prodding the acid burns courtesy of Pastor Gregory.

A muscled arm wrapped under his, behind his back, and he was helped to his feet. But he did not open his eyes.

"Look at me."

Dean didn't. He knew that once he did, his mind was screwed.

"Look at me, son."

The pleading. The pain. Then a thought, wispy and frail, told Dean that if he obeyed, he would see his real father again. In heaven, with little Sammy and beautiful Mommy, in their own home with a dog and apple pie and not a monster in memory...

 _No, Dean. If you listen, you will never see Dad again._

Sam's voice. Back after a long stretch of radio silence. The thin thought that had wormed into Dean's head recoiled, pinned by a spotlight. Before it could retreat he shot it down.

The hands that were not Dad's pressed hard into Dean's face, the acid burns flaring with pain. Crying out, he fought back, Sam's knife seeming to appear in his hand. His father's scream mixed with that of the demon and it threw him to the floor.

One glimpse told him Ewah had placed itself between him and the door.

 _No! I'm almost there!_

He closed his eyes again and lunged up at the demon, knife slashing. A forearm blocked his attack and a fist grabbed his collar, swinging him around and smashing him against the wall. The smell of mint and scotch curdled into organic decay and he gagged before a hand grasped his throat, picking him up by the jaw and pinning him to the wall. He kicked. He grabbed the demon by the arm, which was cold and felt like it had been skinned, slimy with concealed mucus. Dean's thrashing weakened, lungs unable to get so much as a sip of air.

Another very not-human hand splayed over his forehead, and he was powerless as a spear of ice drove into his skull, pushing his consciousness aside, claiming the territory as its own. The demon's voice boomed through his head, loud and overpowering.

 _You—are—MINE!_

Dean was helpless. He felt Sam's pain and distress as though the man were right there, screaming for Ewah to stop. And then, stranger still, he felt like the two mental presences had collided, horns locking, one seeking to protect, the other to conquer. But Dean was never one to let Sam fight his battles alone, especially when he was clearly the underdog.

He could have sworn he felt scorn from his brother at that last thought, but he brushed it aside. He pulled himself from his own mind and in doing so, recovered control over his body. With two quick slashes he opened the demon's wrists, tendons recoiling like bowstrings. He landed on his feet and pressed himself against the wall, gasping. Fire tore down his throat.

The monster roared and would have ripped Dean's head off if not for the flurry of feathers that came between them. He opened his eyes just long enough to see that Agnes had attached herself to Ewah's face, flapping and cawing angrily.

Dean took his chance, driving Sam's knife into the heart of the demon with both hands. It snarled and stepped back, but the knife was stuck and he was forced to let go. With the loss of contact, mental solitude slammed like a door to the face. No more Sam, no more demon.

" _Awk!_ _Awk-awk-awk_!"

Dean turned away and opened his eyes again. There. A flickering flashlight. He dove for it, kicking the shotgun en route. Both in hand, he squared off to the demon again, only to recoil. Agnes had grown to the size of an eagle, wings cramped in the narrow hall, greasy feathers bending and breaking as she fought to keep the demon's face hidden from Dean's view.

He took it as it seemed, and made a dash for the door.

It was as he recalled it – etched with Cherokee letters that glowed brighter and hummed louder as he approached. When he reached for the knob, the letters glowed white hot, waving in the heat. So how to get through?

"Open sesame."

A particularly loud squawk turned his head, but there was only darkness. Facing forward, he scanned the letters and glyphs, seeking a clue or flat-out instructions. Nothing. If only Dave had made it, he could have translated it.

Suddenly, he noticed a sequence of letters over the door knob. They meant nothing to him, and yet...

Dean reached into his jacket and pulled out the ward stone he had found in the cache in the cellar well. The size of a chicken egg and etched with more Cherokee lettering, he'd seen the same stone being unearthed by Angelina in the forest memory, which broke a layer of Ewah's prison and granted the demon a level of freedom. Looking at the stone now, he saw that the letters matched those scratched into the door above the handle.

What if the ward on this door was similar to the one that had imprisoned the demon for centuries? Could it be dismantled the same way?

Dean looked at his feet. Several more glowing characters were drawn into the floorboards. One was blank.

A horrible shriek filled the hall behind him, and Agnes the crow screed in pain. Dean didn't look back. He knelt, drawing the meat cleaver from his belt and raising it high. Smashing it down on the floorboard sent a reverberation through him that let him know he was onto something. Prying the blade loose, he hit it again. Again. Again. Fibrous wood was hewn with every stroke, the board splitting lengthwise down the middle.

It was coming. The demon was coming. Dean dropped the cleaver and plunged his hand into the void, uncaring at the lacerations he received as punishment. His fingers grasped something and he yanked it out. Feet pounding, claws raking the floor, Ewah raced towards him. He didn't turn, casting aside a marked rock similar to the one he already had. Lurching to his feet, he grasped the knob, now icy cold, and shoved the door open.

His heart was galloping so fast he felt faint as he stepped into the unknown, whipping around and slamming the door shut. The demon roared, clawing and bashing at it in rage. He realized then that he had left both shotgun and cleaver behind.

Dean turned away, using the few seconds of respite to analyze his surroundings. After hours of aged architecture, the modern design surprised him; it looked like a tenement hallway, lined with cracked drywall and iron doors he knew he couldn't open. The floor was tiled black and white, like dear Uncle Edward's chess set. It looked somewhat familiar but he couldn't place it. Not that it mattered; it wasn't safe here either.

At first he thought he was imagining it, but, as dust trickled down, he aimed the flashlight at the ceiling. It was getting lower.

"Aw, crap."

A loud bang made him turn, to see that the door was beginning to split as the floorboard had split. A skinless hand reached through, clawing the air from the end of a long sinewy forearm, its owner snarling angrily.

"Not even _death_ will save you from _me!_ "

Everything that was Dean wanted him to stand and fight. But he had nothing left. No weapon. No strength. No time. He turned away, glancing up at the lowering ceiling. A nuisance to Indiana Jones but terrifying all the same.

Once more, Dean surged into a run, light whipping back and forth, footsteps not loud enough to drown out his pounding heart. The ceiling was only three feet over his head...two feet...one...

Dean was ducking his head by the time a small rectangle of light came into view at the end of the hall. He knew without a doubt that it was his salvation. But even as it widened at his approach, it got shorter as the ceiling lowered ever further. His hunched shoulders scraped against it. Then his upper back. He threw the flashlight ahead, watching it spin off through the doorway before he shambled after it, forced to use his hands and move like a chimp. But then the ceiling was too low even for that.

He wasn't claustrophobic but he would be after this. He lurched forward on his hands and knees until the ceiling pressed against his back and he lowered himself to his belly. His legs propelled him quickly but then there was no room to get his rump up high enough and he was left with only his toes and elbows.

"No, no, _please_."

The doorway was there. Just there! The light was blinding, piercing his skull, his pupils reduced to pinpricks. But he did not hesitate, for the ceiling was pressing against his back, making it harder and harder to breathe...

His hands gripped the edge of the threshold just as his chest began to feel the crushing pressure and he wiggled the rest of the way through, not caring that it was less a doorway and more of an edge and he was falling...falling...


	40. Thorn

**12:46**

* * *

~40~ Thorn

Whispers. Dark, indistinct, sourceless. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make out any words, though words they were. Were they man's? Woman's? Child's? All or none? Were they scared, secretive, or angry?

All Dean knew was that when he opened his eyes, they ceased to be heard.

He was lying on his side, neck kinked, arm asleep. Groaning, he pushed himself up, trembling with fatigue. Sweat had cooled all over his body. He shivered.

"Sam..."

It had come out habitually, for he had forgotten who he'd really been looking for. Raising his head, Dean gazed about blearily, taking in the tall, circular room he'd stumbled into. It looked like the inside of a silo, lined with rusted iron plate and floored with coarse grating, below which there was nothing. There was no door, no windows, no light source.

But for him, it was empty.

"Hello?"

He gazed up but couldn't see the ceiling. The soft moaning accompanied the feeling that the silo was swaying in the wind. Still staring up, Dean kicked something, and looked down to find the flashlight. It flickered feebly. He picked it up and clicked it off before pocketing it.

"I gotta find Dad. I gotta find Jessica's killer. It's the only thing I can think about."

Dean whirled around, eyes wide. "Sam? Sam!"

Nothing. Nothing and nobody. Then, his own voice, not from his throat.

"Sam, behind you!"

A stone formed in his chest as the memory came flooding back. The look of agony on Sam's face as that knife plunged into his spine and he fell to his knees. Dean had run to him, stopped him from falling and dying in the dirt. But he still died, even when Dean begged him not to.

He screwed his eyes shut and pressed hands to his temples.

"No, no, no, no."

Then his voice again, accompanied by a vision of himself, staring at him with demon black eyes.

"You can't escape me, Dean! You're gonna die! And this... _this_ is what you're gonna become!"

Howls. Snarls. The bays of hounds. Dean opened his eyes and the vision faded. Instead he saw his brother, sitting on a bed that wasn't there before. His hair was shorter, face less aged from stress but creased with concern. Words came unbidden from Dean's lips.

"What are we gonna do now? I got less than four hours on the clock." He was shaking like a chihuahua, sweating bullets and speaking with a tongue of sandpaper. And his arms itched like hell. "I'm gonna die, Sammy."

Sam looked away, releasing a breath. "Yeah. You are. You're going back."

He blanched. "Back?"

"Downstairs, Dean. Hell. It's about goddamn time, too. Truth is..." Sam stood, eyes flaring yellow, no pupils. "You've been a real pain in my ass."

Dean recoiled but was helpless as Sam thrust an arm out at him, sending him flying back against the wall with an unseen force. Dean struggled.

"No! You get out of my brother, you evil son of a bitch!"

Sam chuckled, a chilling sound, and sauntered up to him. "No one's possessing me, Dean. This is what I'm going to become. This is what I _want_ to become." He put his hand on Dean's shoulder. "And there's nothing you can do about it." The hand moved to his neck, Sam's face morphing into one of pure hatred as he began to throttle him.

But in the flicker of an eye, Sam was on the floor, Dean on top of him, throwing punch after punch across his little brother's face, feeling his nose break and his skin burst like overripe fruit but not caring because it wasn't really his brother, it was a husk with no soul and it was not natural and it was not Sammy not Sammy not Sammy—

Dean realized he was punching the floor over and over, the flesh of his knuckles tearing against the grating. He stopped, breathing hard, and slowly relaxed his fists. They throbbed with every beat of his heart. And he was shaking.

"Sam?"

He was alone again, the room barren but for him and the skin left on the grating.

Dean sat on his rear, chin to his chest, arms around his legs. They kept coming. The memories. Dad, dead in the hospital. The family home in flames. Lucifer breaking Bobby's neck with a flick of his wrist. Ellen cradling her dying daughter. Sam crying himself to sleep after shooting Madison the werewolf. The shear agony as hellhounds ripped into Dean's flesh, throat tearing from his screams, his brother's pleas for mercy the last words he hears before his life bleeds out and the hounds drag his soul to hell—

"Stop, stop, _stop!_ "

Dean realized he was now on his side, curled into a ball, hands behind his head, as though protecting himself from a gang beating. He was allowing this. This descent into crazy town. Sure, his whole existence revolved around personal sacrifice and pain and suffering but he'd never been alone. Not truly. He had happy memories. They were elusive and never the first to surface when he got thinking about his past. But they were there. He just had to find them. And, as he unravelled himself and laid on his back, he did.

The look of wonder on Sam's face as Dean revealed the Transformer toy he'd stolen for his seventh birthday. Making Dad laugh at stupid jokes as they drove from state to state. Being a father to Ben and husband to Lisa. Trying to show Castiel how to have a good time but failing and bolting from the club, laughing until his sides hurt.

And then there were the long nights spent parked on the side of a forgotten highway. The brothers would each crack open a cold one and lie on the hood of the Impala, gazing up at the stars without exchanging a single word.

Dean locked his mind on one such night, conjuring up every detail he could – how old they were, which state they were in, the shirt he wore, the beer brand – and what details he couldn't remember he made up. And the harder he thought, the more real it seemed. He could feel the cool windshield and warm hood under his body. He could smell the tang of pine on the breeze and hear the hum of a distant freeway. He was staring up at the stars, Sam right there beside him, finishing off his beer with a satisfied sigh.

Dean would die with that memory. He would not allow the demon to take his mind when it was swathed in pain. Maybe, if he focused on the moments of happiness he was blessed with, he would not go insane...

Dean opened his eyes and the memory was gone. Someone was in the room with him.

He leaped to his feet, lip curled over clenched teeth, hefting the flashlight like a club.

"Show yourself!"

He turned about, glancing up into the black heavens and down through the grating. Nothing. Then, the smell of roses.

Blinking, Dean spotted the flower nearby, small, pink, with five petals. He stepped over to it, cautious, and picked it up, conscious of the thorns. And yet it got him anyway, drawing blood. Hissing, he dropped it. When it landed, it shrivelled up, dissolving into ash and sinking through the grating.

"What have you done?"

Dean whirled around, fists clenched, tensing at the sight of a woman standing across the room from him. Her fiery hair was a brilliant contrast to her raven black, layered dress. Her skin was ghostly but her eyes blazed with anger. He had no idea what had ruffled her feathers but he suspected it had something to do with the torture device around her waist. What was it called? Right, a corset.

"Hey," he said, smiling. "How you doing?"

Her eyes narrowed further. "You. You broke the ward."

"Actually it was you who broke the ward. I'm here trying to clean up your mess. Angelina."

Her ghostliness became evident as her eyes darkened. Literally. "Who are you?"

"My name is Dean Winchester. You won't know the name. The gun hadn't been invented yet."

Angelina looked him up and down, no doubt puzzled by his accent and strange clothes. She seemed to be sane, unlike her kin, but he didn't lower his guard.

"How did you come to be here, Dean Winchester?"

"Bit of a long story." He was fighting to keep the tremble from his words. The anger. "But you know most of it. You released the demon of craziness, who then killed your entire family, and it created a pocket in the Collective Unconscious in which it has trapped them. Now me and my brother are caught up in it, and it's all your fault."

Her stare intensified. "The fault is not mine but the demon's. It tricked me."

"Of course it did!" Dean snapped. "It's a _demon_. That's what they _do_. But how are you like this? Here? What makes you so special?"

"I was given what I wanted. I wanted the ability of a psychic, to delve into the, as you called it, Collective Unconscious, and assert my will on those who have wronged me."

"Well, fantastic job, lady. I can't even tell you how many innocent people you have hurt. It's been a hundred and fifty years and people are still falling victim to the demon's trap."

"Impossible," Angelina hissed. "There are barriers all around the grounds. Not even insects can get inside."

"Why? Who put them there?"

She turned away, but not before Dean saw the hurt on her face. Perhaps it was a hunch, or perhaps it was because he'd been there so long he was becoming almost telepathic, but he knew who put up the barriers around the manor. The very ones that had prevented him and Sam from entering the grounds the normal way.

"Agnes."

Angelina nodded. "My grandniece. Her powers rivalled mine, even if her mother's and grandmother's did not."

"Why'd she do it?"

"To keep the souls of the dead from being carried away by an ancient race of spirits."

"Reapers?"

"No. Once, they were called valkyries. But Agnes' spell kept them out, for I had summoned them too late."

"That doesn't explain why she did this," said Dean impatiently. "What did she have against her entire family?"

"Agnes? She had no hatred in her heart. Not until the demon caught her in its clutches and made her into what I was." Angelina turned to Dean, eyes misty. She blinked. "I hated the Corvuses for what they did to me. They—"

"Save it. I don't care what Atticus' did to you and Ariel. It didn't warrant..." He gestured angrily around him. " _This_."

"You don't understand—"

"They were your family! So what if you didn't like your in-laws, or that your nieces and nephews had no idea who you really were—"

"I never wanted to hurt _them!_ "

"Well, ya did."

Angelina flared. "You hold your tongue, boy. You speak of what you do not know."

"Don't I?" Dean met her fire with ice. "If you can read minds, look into my memories. I sold my soul for my brother. I went to _hell_ for him. And I'd do it again. That's what you do for family."

She held his gaze with admirable strength. "I have seen your memories. They were what allowed me to find you on the correct plane and speak to you. Your happiness is...different from that of most people."

Dean gestured at their surroundings. "What is this, then? Why doesn't this look like part of the manor? And why haven't you lost your marbles?"

She frowned at the unfamiliar expression. "As I said, I have the power to manipulate the planes of thoughts and memories, as the demon does. I may not be as powerful, but before all was lost, I made myself a haven, so even when my body died my mind was safe here." Her frown morphed into a scowl. "And safe I was, until you came."

"Let me guess. The door with all the fancy mumbo jumbo carved into it."

"That 'mumbo jumbo' is what kept the demon imprisoned in the woods for centuries, and me sane." She gazed around at the iron-walled silo. "Even if it has been lonely."

Dean looked around too, and decided that she was seeing something different from what he was seeing. But he didn't mention it.

"Alright. Let's get all our quackers in a row here. You free the demon in exchange for power. It takes more freedom than you agreed to, made its way to the manor, and began to pick people off. Gerald and his wife and son were the first to go."

She nodded grimly. "At first I thought its freedom impossible. But then staff kept complaining about nightmares, how peculiar the animals were acting. Then Atticus and Cynthia, Thomas' parents, and his brother all died, not of my doing. I thought, at first, that it was a stroke of fortune, but the house felt...wrong. I was able to locate the demon and bind it in the cellar. And then little Agnes changed." Her face morphed into a scowl. "The demon gloated to me later. How it had taken my thirst for vengeance and placed it in the child, and she felt it even if she didn't understand. It told her of the plot my sister and I had brewed – I had Ariel marry Thomas in order to eventually take control of the Corvus fortune. But what the demon didn't tell Agnes, was that both me and my sister were the perpetrators. It said I alone was aiming to ruin her grandparents' relationship, trick Thomas into marrying _me_ , and take the fortune for myself. I didn't want that. I wanted to share it with Ariel, and she with me."

"Well by that time, the fortune was partly yours, then," said Dean. "The heads of the house were dead. Ariel was married to Thomas and you became part of the family. You won."

Angelina shook her head. "But it wasn't over. The Beast had already infected the house. And it knew my weakness – seeing my sister in pain. So it never went after me directly. It had Agnes poison her brother and two cousins. The following year, I found Edward in the sun room, dead from gorging on worms and dirt. His wife barricaded herself on the widow's walk until she died from exposure. His brother hanged himself in the gallery that same year, after three of his paintings went missing. Only two were found, but no one wished to go into the gallery to replace them. They were hung elsewhere in the manor—"

Dean made a rolling gesture with his hand. "I don't need all the details, sister. Cut to the climax."

Her nostrils flared at the interruption but did not waste time berating him. She knew his time was limited. "After the demon had Agnes murder my sister's unborn child, Ariel..." She took a shaky breath. "Ariel killed herself in grief, but it wasn't until the following year that I realized the Beast was not just driving everyone mad, but trapping their consciousness and souls in this other plane and thus growing in strength with every life taken. That's when I summoned the valkyries, but Agnes had already been bidden by the demon to place wards around the grounds, stopping them from entering. I knew then that I had to make another deal, a simpler one, with the demon."

"Awesome," said Dean blandly.

Angelina scowled again. "It was to release Agnes, both her mind and body, and allow her to leave the manor, in exchange for my life. For by that time I had figured out how to protect myself from the demon's influence, and mortals were no match for me. I was untouchable. Once I was gone, the demon would be able to escape the cellar, and regain the freedom I had granted it when I broke the first layer of its cave prison."

"And that's when things went catastrophically wrong," said Dean with a mocking smile.

"It agreed," Angelina continued tersely. "It released Agnes and allowed me to convince her to go into town on her own, just to get her off the grounds. Once through the gate, she would be unable to come back from her own wards unless she dismantled them. But..." She looked down at her feet. "I played the sin – I gambled. I gave her a book of spells to smuggle out—"

"Wait, what?" Dean frowned. "What book?"

"It was how I found out how bindings of nature were wrought, the existence of dreamwalking – which allows one to travel visually between worlds – as well as the summoning of valkyries, called something else by the savages of America." She shook her head. "Alas. I've forgotten the name."

"Did this book also tell you how to find Ew— the demon?" asked Dean. He thought of the conservatory, where he and Sam had found a book beneath a circular glass window in the floor. It had turned out to be a fake, dissolving into dust once Sam picked it up. Soon after, Ewah had attacked, leaving Sam weak. They'd deemed the room a trap.

"Not exactly," said Angelina. "The book told me that some things of nature could be found with nature. Copper can locate hidden enchantments. I had a copper leaf broach from my mother that worked perfectly. It led me to the demon's prison deep in the forest, where it had been forgotten by the Cherokee peoples."

Dean's head was whirling with all this new information. If only he and Sam had found her earlier. "Alright. So you gave Agnes this book to take with her to freedom. Why?"

"I had hoped that it would help her find a way to defeat the demon once and for all. But she was caught. Enraged by my attempt, the demon poisoned Agnes with a memory impediment. Once she left the grounds, she had difficulties recalling who she was for long periods of time, only occasionally remembering what had happened and what she had done. The Beast thought that a better punishment than outright killing her."

Posed now with two topics to question, Dean decided to find out the fate of the book first.

"The demon destroyed it," Angelina answered simply. "Although, by that time, an exact copy of the manor had been constructed in the Collective Unconscious, as had everything inside. So the book still exists, just on a plane few can access easily. The demon isn't strong enough to destroy it, not with most of its potential still locked away in the cave and a shortage of unspent souls in its domain."

Dean now turned his thoughts to Agnes. When Sam spoke with her at length, he said she claimed to be unable to recall why she was there or what she was looking for. She'd never been hostile to them, sometimes appeared to them as a slowly aging girl or a crow, and never hung around very long. It was like she got tired.

"I think she's still alive," he muttered.

"What?"

"Agnes. We've seen her multiple times, although she never told us what her deal was. Is it possible that she...she's immortal?"

Angelina began to pace, agitated. "I suppose...She had great potential, even as a child. If she is immortal, she hasn't been able to free us because she can't remember herself long enough."

"What if there was someone to help her find Nemo?"

She paused to stare at him. "Who's Nemo?"

Dean shook his head dismissively. "If someone was there to help her remember, do you think she could gank the thing?" He reached for the walkie-talkie, only to remember that he'd dropped it when running from Ewah. He grimaced.

"I...I don't know," said Angelina. "I never figured out how to destroy the Beast. But then, I've been trapped here over a century. And I don't even recall most of that time."

"Okay." He rubbed his temples. "So Agnes was caught, cursed, and the book was destroyed. Then what?"

"Then, the Beast made Thomas kill himself," said Angelina with forced indifference. "Had him skin his own body until he bled to death right before my eyes, as though to try and break me."

"But it did hurt you, didn't it." Not a question. "You knew, as did Ariel, that he'd always liked you more. But you were just a servant to everyone's eyes."

"It does not matter," Angelina snarled, once more flaring with anger. "That monster had taken everyone from me. And so, I released the spell I had been preparing, even though I knew it wasn't ready. The effort killed me, and my soul and consciousness were trapped in the world the demon had created. From here I learned that, while my spell hadn't killed it, it had destroyed its physical form beyond repair and it, too, was banished here to its own domain. But not before it unleashed its own fury, instantaneously breaking the minds of everyone left in the manor. They killed each other before the end of the first hour of the last morning."

Dean ran his forefinger up along his jaw, pricked with stubble. "So it nearly died as well. That's why it's never been out in the real world. If it had a body it could leave the manor and screw the whole city if it wanted." He frowned. "Then why didn't it just take a host like the ghosts do?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"Some members of your hospitable family tried to use poor schmucks like us as conduits to get to our bodies and possess them. In the real world, I evicted one such spirit from this guy, George, whose consciousness is wandering about the manor even as we speak. But the demon, not being a true demon, could probably hold onto a vessel as long as it wanted."

"It was weak," said Angelina. "After my sacrifice, the Beast had used much of my family's souls' energy to keep itself alive and its domain intact. Perhaps only the newcomers, such as yourself, your brother, and this George, have been giving it additional strength." Her hands went out to the sides in a dainty shrug. "But I cannot say for sure."

"So that's it then. That's the secret of the Corvus family massacre." His eyes flicked up to hers. "Well. You wanted me to find you. Here I am."

Angelina looked taken aback, but her face cleared with recollection. "My key. Yes, I'd forgotten. I assume many of my kin left clues for you as well."

"Yeah. Not a great help. Could have used a little more info."

"What can you expect from a household of maddened spirits? They helped you in the end, did they not?"

Dean thought about his last adventure. The cello that distracted Sam's evil twin. The ghost children that helped him hide from Mrs Kenningsworth. The mirror man who gave Dean...

He paused, then pulled out the hand mirror from his pocket. It was cracked but remained intact.

"Has that helped you?" asked Angelina.

Dean shrugged. "No. But it must mean something." No, it didn't. These ghosts were bonkers. It was just a mirror. He replaced it in his pocket.

"So what good did coming here do?" he said.

"Well, if you had done what was asked of you, you would have brought the book of spells to me and I might have been able to do something with it. I cannot venture out on my own without—"

"Whoa, whoa, what?" Dean's smile was pained. "That book? The one we found turned to ash. There were no other books like it anywhere."

Pale as she was, she visibly whitened. "It...it's gone?"

"Uh, _yeah_."

She began to wring her hands, looking about nervously. "We're too late."

"Come again?"

"The demon shouldn't have the strength to destroy any memory once it's been recorded into the Collective Unconscious, anymore than one can kill a tree by crushing a single leaf. But if it has, then it's strong enough to..."

Boom.

Dean turned about.

Boom.

He felt the floor grating tremble and glanced down into the abyss below. Angelina's face turned ugly with anger.

"Fool. You led it straight to me!"

Boom. _Boom_.

Eyes wide, Dean turned to her, then stiffened at the stench of rotting vegetation and still water that wafted up from below. Moments later, black root-like tendrils began to squirm through the floor grating, concentrating around Angelina. She tried to run. They lashed out at her, wrapping around her legs, her waist, her arms. She shrieked as she was lifted into the air spread-eagle. Tears streamed down her cheeks, neck tendons bulging as she screamed to him.

"Help me!"

Dean was frozen to the spot, at a loss of what to do. Thorny tendrils rose between him and her, posed like cobras. If he stepped closer, they struck at him. Angelina screamed louder as she was stretched ever further.

"Meddlesome _bitch!_ " Ewah's voice reverberated from everywhere. "You have eluded me too long!"

"Let her go!" Dean roared.

"Oblivion's too good for you," Ewah snarled even as Angelina's screams thinned to soundless gasps, body too stretched to take in air. "I'm going destroy you. I'm going to _devour_ you. Utterly and completely, and you will be no more."

Dean tried to shut it out. Covered his ears and closed his eyes but the sounds of feeding still came through. A crunch, the splatter of burst organs, the slurping of blood. She screamed and screamed, unable to pass out or die as she was eaten alive. Dean dared not look as the sounds heralded the last few seconds that Angelina would exist and—

Wait. Who?

Dean frowned at his knees, which ached from pressing into the coarse grating making up the floor. What just happened? Had he been speaking to someone? Was it important? Funnily enough, he could remember what was said but not to whom he'd been speaking with.

A low chuckle. Dean kept his eyes down, knowing that whatever Ewah had done, it could do the same to him. A complete and utter obliteration from existence. The longer he cowered, the louder the demon's laughter became, until it filled his skull and drowned his thoughts.

And then the floor changed. It was no longer the grating but a yellowing clock face, the two hands corroded and weathered. Dean didn't need to see what time it was, but he looked all the same – the hour hand pointed rigidly at the one, the minute hand bearing down on the twelve. As he watched, it trembled, and with a deep, clanking _thunk_ , it closed the final hour.

The Westminster chimes were as loud as church bells. The first segment ended. Then the second. Third. And fourth. Then, with the one o'clock gong, Dean died.

He felt it, severance of a rope he hadn't noticed before, which had tied him to his body in the real world. A fist closed around his heart, and it fluttered feebly once before giving up. He now felt adrift in space, with no lifeline, no way to get home.

Ewah was laughing at him. The floor trembled. Dean stared down even as a spiderweb of cracks split the clock face, spreading up the walls. He followed them up, and watched as the room shattered and came down upon him.

* * *

 **Lines/scenes taken from S1 E2, S2 E22, S3 E10, S4 E6, S6 E6.**


	41. Deadlight

– – **: – –**

* * *

~41~ Deadlight

He had no idea how long he was out. His whole body hurt and he took it as a good sign – feeling bad was better than feeling nothing at all. But something was wrong. It took him a few moments to figure it out, and when he did, he groaned.

His heart wasn't beating. It didn't need to anymore, because he was dead and trapped in a world with the damned. He didn't even need to breathe, and only did so to feel some semblance of life.

Dean pushed himself up, the floor smooth and clammy. He looked around. Nothing. He brought out the flashlight, clicking it on. It flickered briefly and went out.

"No, no, no." He smacked it against his palm. Flicker, dead. "Come on!" Nothing. "Come _on!_ "

He realized he was on the verge of tears. He angrily rubbed them from his eyes. He was not defeated yet. He still had his mind. And where there was sanity, there was hope.

A ragged breath. Dean barred his teeth, a dog that had been beaten one too many times.

"Like what you see?" He got to his feet, not bothering to close his eyes. "Why so shy? Come and get some!"

With the sound of a large power switch, a rectangular light fixture burst into life thirty feet away. After the derelict hallway and the silo room, Dean wasn't surprised to see another modern object. But what seized his attention was the figure lying on the ground in the pool of dead light. They were cocooned in chains, the ends disappearing into the darkness as though the person were on multiple leads and had gone as far as they could before the slack ran out. The links clinked as they breathed.

Dean took a step. And as his foot fell more light fixtures burst into life, row upon row in either direction, illuminating the space with a slightly greenish hue. He squinted until his eyes adjusted, then looked around. It was a parkade, old, worn and devoid of vehicles. Black pools of water and oil reflected their surroundings. Parking lines were faded and concrete pillars were cracked to the point of distrust. But for the hum of the lights, it was quiet, no city sounds or wind or tires squealing like wounded animals.

Dean turned his attention back to the chained figure on the floor, half lying in a pool of water. He stepped closer. Closer. Then...

"Sam."

He was over in a heartbeat, sliding on his knees to him. The chains were spiked, encrusted with rust, the links as thick as his thumbs. There were several wrapped and tangled all around Sam's body, preventing him from moving his arms. Tears in his flesh and jacket were evidence of his struggles, but now he was lying there as though trying to take a nap. It was painful just looking at him.

"Sam! Sam, hey, buddy..." He took his face in his hands, lifting it gently.

"Dean?" Sam opened his eyes, looking at him blearily but with growing comprehension. He sagged. "You found me."

"I'm getting you out of here." Dean tugged at a chain, but it locked against another, which in turn was pinned by a third.

"Where are we?"

Dean glanced around. "The parkade where I ganked my first shapeshifter. I was fourteen. Don't forget a day like that."

Sam's brow crunched in confusion. "Doesn't look like a parkade to me."

"Then what does it look like?"

"A library."

Dean chuckled. "Only you, Sammy." Unable to find a loose chain, his eyes followed their tails to a cement pillar, which they wrapped like ivy around a tree.

"Dean...something happened—"

"Save it."

Sam's mouth was like parchment and every inch of his body ached, if not outright hurt. He'd long since surrendered to despair yet never truly gave up hope that his brother would find him. Even if they couldn't escape this place, at least they'd be trapped together. But this wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

"Dean, just listen to me." He writhed, wincing as his restraints pinched and jabbed. "The demon...it..."

"It what?"

A mixture of humiliation and shame sculpted Sam's expression. "It...used me."

Dean's own face darkened. "What do you mean, 'used you?'"

"Like the ghosts tried with you, what they did to George. It got in my head, used me as a conduit to possess my body. I tried to go with it, to try and slow it down, but it just shrugged me off and left me here. Dean, it's loose. In the real world."

Dean paled. "Garth."

Ω

"They aren't waking up. Why aren't they waking up?"

Garth paced nervously about the morgue examination room. One o'clock was nigh but the brothers still hadn't returned from their trip to the Collective Unconscious. Which could only mean one thing – they were losing.

Lilly Anderson stood from the swivel chair, exhaustion augmenting her Parkinson's such that she had to lean on the desk to come out from behind it. Nearby, Dr Corrigan remained in a comatose state, a crow feather in hand. Lilly had said that she was dreamwalking; where and why, she did not know. But she had her suspicions.

"Try the radio again."

"I have tried," said Garth morosely. "Nothing." He turned to the brothers, lumps of meat on stone cold tables, beneath bloodstained sheets. For so long he'd had hope, often checking for pulses or lifting eyelids. But no. The Winchesters had no life. They had become _things_. They were no longer people.

His watch beeped. One in the morning. Time's up.

His vision blurred and he leaned on his hands on the counter, struggling to contain himself. Never had he felt so helpless. So useless.

"What now?"

Lilly shook her head. "I don't know."

"What would happen if we forced Dr Corrigan to wake up?"

"As I said before, it could be dangerous for all of us. Don't even think about it, young man."

He gritted his teeth and said nothing for almost a minute. And then...

"Garth."

Pressing the tears from his eyes, he sniffled and started to turn. "What...?"

He froze. Movement beneath one of the sheets.

"Oh my God."

The body sat up, still covered in the shroud, and Garth leaped forward, tugging it down. "Sam! Great balls of fire, Sam, you made it! You...! Sam...?"

Sam's chin remained on his bare chest, arms limp at his sides. He almost looked like a sleep walker getting ready for a midnight stroll. Garth took hold of his uninjured shoulder and gave him a shake.

"Rise and shine!"

"Garth." Lilly didn't like the way the man was acting.

"Come on, buddy, you've been asleep long enough." Garth had a goofy smile on his face, like he was talking to a child and not a man twice his size. But it wavered when he noticed that Sam's chest wasn't moving. He wasn't breathing.

"Sam? Sam, hey—" He went to feel for a pulse, only to squawk as the Winchester's arm jerked up, hand closing around Garth's scrawny neck. His eyes bulged, realizing his mistake too late.

"No!" Lilly screamed. "Don't look it in the eye, Garth! Don't look—"

Sam whipped his arm back, sending Garth flying into the wall of body refrigerators. His head cracked against the stainless steel with a low, rattling _boom_. He folded to the floor and did not get up.

Lilly gasped but couldn't go to him, not without getting within reach of the thing now animating Sam. She watched, jaw hanging and eyes wide, as it tilted its head from side to side, neck cracking. It rolled and stretched its shoulders, testing its mobility, then turned, sliding its legs off the gurney, slowly getting to its feet. It had yet to open its eyes but it seemed to know where Lilly was. It turned to her, bare feet making little sound on the linoleum, head bowed. Its hair cast its face in shadow.

Lilly began to inch her way to the door. If she held its attention, it might not notice Dr Corrigan, who was helpless in her current state. It turned to keep facing Lilly, posture slack. Its arm spasmed. A gargle made its way out of its throat. And then all its wounds – from the laceration across its pectoral to the bite on its thigh – began to ooze black slime. Even with her weakened, aged senses, the stench of swamp scum made her gag.

Then the thing's abdominals convulsed, and a torrent of black, pungent bile spewed from between its lips, spattering down its chest and all over the floor. Lilly gasped again and turned her head away, fighting oh so desperately the urge to look to its eyes.

Knowing what she knew, she still had never been one to pray. But seeing this poor boy now, at the seer unnaturalness of it all, she begged for help to anyone who would listen.

The thing had just started to raise its head when, contrary to her expectations, she was heard.

"Ms Andersen?"

Detective Roberts opened the door, only to freeze, stunned by the sight of a naked corpse standing beside his gurney, drooling and bleeding black goo. Roberts had had only one drink at the bar, but one drink was all it took to be drugged. And yet Lilly looked petrified with fear. Roberts was not the only one seeing this.

"What the f—!" He reached for his holster, remembering too late that Garth had relieved him of his weapon hours ago and it was now on the desk, out of reach.

"Help me," Lilly whimpered.

Roberts wasted no time, slipping sideways through the door and grasping the aged woman by the arm, guiding her out while keeping his eyes fixated on the zombie. At least, he thought it was a zombie. It was certainly stupid, because it only realized its prey was escaping just before Roberts pulled the door closed. The key had been left in the lock, and he turned it, keeping a hold on it to prevent the man from opening the door from the inside.

The man's face slammed against the door window, black goop spraying over the glass. The knob rattled as he pawed at it from the other side, and then he slumped against the window, face pressing into the glass, jaw hanging open.

And then...things began to grow out of his mouth. At first Roberts thought they were worms – he was dead after all – but they were black and too pointy, more like living roots. Robert's guts churned but he kept his eyes trained on the closed lids of the zombie's.

Time slowed. He listened to the pounding of his heart. He thought he heard Lilly say something, no, _scream_ something, but before she could finish a word, the zombie's eyes opened. And for a moment Roberts stared into the soul of evil – a dozen pupils in each eye, all ringed by ochre, no whites. And then, before the second pump of his next heartbeat, his mind snapped.

Lilly screamed as Roberts began to smash his head against the door, again and again and again and again, until a bloody flower blossomed across the wood, and he kept doing it, crushing his nose flat, splitting his forehead open.

"Stop! Stop it!" She tried to pull him away from the door but even if she'd been fifty years younger, she wouldn't have had the strength to stop a madman from following the orders of the voices.

She wailed as Roberts finally beat himself beyond hope, collapsing with a face barely recognizable as his own. His eyes were still open, bleeding from the mouth, no doubt from biting his tongue.

From the corner of her vision she saw the monster fall from view, as though whatever it had done to the detective had exhausted it. She knelt at Roberts' side. There was no pulse.

She was too scared to cry. Too angry. She saw a smear of dark ooze beneath the door and risked a glance. It was a small mass of root-like tentacles, like the ones that had been wriggling inside Sam's mouth. Before she could reach over to crush it, it darted for Roberts' corpse, squeezing between his teeth.

Lilly found speed she'd hadn't used for years to scramble away as Roberts' corpse lifted its head, then sat up, then stood. It seemed to have little control of itself, hands twitching, head ticking. It turned to her, exactly as the demon had done when wearing Sam. It smiled and opened its eyes.


	42. Sanctuary

**1:07**

* * *

~42~ Sanctuary

"You want me to do _what?_ "

Like a fly in spiderweb, Sam was still cocooned in chains despite Dean's efforts to free him. He lifted a finger in semblance of a shrug. "I know it sounds crazy—"

"I think you passed crazy about thirty miles back, dude."

"Then what's _your_ brilliant plan?" said Sam blandly. "Sit here and hope someone smarter than us eventually figures all this crap out? Even if that was to happen, we're _dead_ , Dean. We lost. If we do this, then maybe we can prevent anyone else from ending up like us."

Dean looked like he'd just been told he had to take a syringe to the eye. Even if it was to save his vision, he was still beyond uncomfortable about it. His face creased with squirmy reluctance.

"Come on...Really?"

Sam nodded grimly.

"But what if it doesn't work? I'm not a demon, or a ghost—"

"Actually, we are, now. Ghosts. And we won't know if we don't try, right?"

"But I don't know how! Let me think a while longer. I'll come up with something."

"No, Dean. Garth's in danger, along with anyone within sight of that demon. I don't like the idea anymore than you do—trust me, I don't—but the longer we wait, the more damage that thing will do."

"And what if the demon's still in your gourd? You could pop like a grape."

"We were bred to contain archangels," said Sam. "I think I could handle a tree nymph and a single person."

Still Dean hesitated, biting his lip, scowling, looking anywhere but Sam.

"Dean. Please."

"...Fine." Dean shifted to a more comfortable position, and then reached out to his brother. "...You sure about this?"

"Just do it."

Teeth clenched, Dean pressed his palm against Sam's forehead and closed his eyes. Not sure how this was supposed to work, he imagined his hand going _through_ Sam's forehead, to touch his thoughts. He felt him shudder, and empathized. On three occasions a ghost of Corvus Manor had tried to hijack Dean's body, spears of ice driving into his head and pushing his consciousness aside. He could only hope Sam wasn't feeling pain like that and did not let go. Sam was right. They had to do this and chickening out wasn't going to make it happen faster.

He knew he was doing it right when he could no longer feel the floor under his knees, the shirt on his back, or anything at all. He was not cold or warm and there was no sensation of movement, but at the same time, he felt he was going somewhere.

Then he did feel something. He was being sucked into a tube too narrow, like Augustus Gloop in Wonka's chocolate factory. He didn't need to breathe but it instilled a panic in him that made the sensation worse. He saw nothing, heard nothing. A light tug, like a child grabbing his shirt and holding on, gave him some sense of solidarity. He let it be, though he could shake it off if he wanted, even as the compression around him intensified to the point where he knew that if he'd been in physical form, he would have been crushed.

Then suddenly, it was gone.

Dean opened his eyes. No, opened _Sam's_ eyes. He filled Sam's lungs with air. He moved Sam's hand. He felt a cold floor beneath Sam's body.

He shifted, wincing as several wounds screamed for his attention. Ignoring them for now, he tried to sit up. But he was both uncoordinated and weak, and only flopped onto his back, looking around blearily. It was weird. Sam had a degree of colour blindness, and one eye was a tad weaker than the other. His brother wouldn't notice the difference, but it made Dean want to rub the weaker one.

He was near a door, lying on the floor of some kind medical lab or—he spotted the gurneys and body fridges—an examination room. And, he was embarrassed to notice, he wasn't wearing anything.

"The hell?" Even speaking felt and sounded weird. He would recognize Sam's voice anywhere, but hearing it from his mouth was something else.

 _Do you mind getting up?_

Dean's head whipped around, long hair getting in his face. He brushed it away irritably.

"Sam?"

Turning his attention from physical to mental, he became aware of another presence in Sam's gourd. Dean was behind the wheel and someone was sitting shotgun. It didn't feel dangerous, but he wasn't going to ignore it either. Dean gave it a prod, and suddenly he was bombarded with thoughts and memories that were both his and not his. He recognized events and conversations, experienced the emotions felt during those moments, so many of them familiar while others were either more intense or dimmer compared to what Dean had felt. When Dad died. When Mom's ghost appeared in their childhood home. Meeting Castiel. And then there were the memories that weren't his but Sam's. His first kiss. Passing the entrance examinations for law school. The Cage—

 _No!_

A mental door slammed in Dean's face, and he realized that he was not only being rude, but was endangering himself to Sam's demons.

 _Sorry_ , he thought sincerely, ashamed of his own prodding.

He felt his brother's anger and embarrassment even though his words were chilled. _It's fine. We've got a job to do. Try to stand._

Dean pushed himself up, feeling every ache and pain in Sam's body, trying to look anywhere but below his metaphorical belt. He was going to have to respect Sam's privacy as much as possible, especially now that his brother had hitched a ride with him and could see everything as well. Perhaps that was the tugging sensation he'd felt when transferring from the Collective Unconscious. He was glad he hadn't shaken it off.

 _How are you with me but not in charge here?_ he asked.

 _Because_ you _possessed_ me _._

 _Well then take the reins. You've done it before._

 _I'm trying, but it's like watching TV_ , said Sam. _I can still feel everything too. It's kind of...uncomfortable._

Dean could tell. He tried to prevent the blending of their thoughts and memories, but that was no easier than breathing different air in the same car. He still caught Sam's recollections of being possessed by a demon and an archangel, the latter allowing Sam to watch as Lucifer killed Cas, then Bobby, then beat the hell out of Dean. The sense of helplessness bled into his own mind, and he couldn't drain it without shutting Sam off completely.

 _Please don't do that_ , the younger brother said blandly.

 _I'm not going to._

 _And get up. Sometime today._

 _I'm trying my best here._ And Dean was. But he felt as clumsy as a child in an adult diver suit. He rolled onto his front, then got up on his hands and knees. _Why can ghosts and demons do this so easily?_

 _Dunno. I'm more concerned as to where Ewah is. It used me for a bit and then, what, dumped me for someone else? Where is it?_

Dean grabbed the edge of a counter and sat up, knees cold on the floor. He straightened and nearly fell over.

"Whoa."

 _Stop swaying so much, you're giving me motion sickness._

 _Don't hurl,_ said Dean. _If you hurl, I hurl._

It took a few attempts but he managed to get to his feet, as wobbly as a newborn giraffe. He eventually got his legs somewhat under control and stood fully. It was strange to see the world from a higher perspective, and he nearly stumbled over his own feet trying to walk.

 _Do you mind?_ said Sam. _It's kind of cold._

Dean looked around for something to wrap himself up in, only to freeze at the sight of an ancient woman in a lab coat, sitting slumped in a swivel chair on the other side of the room. She looked to be sleeping.

 _Who's that?_

 _Don't recognize her_ , said Sam.

 _Better for her if she doesn't wake up right now._

Leaning heavily on the counter, Dean followed it closer to the gurney where Sam's body used to be, before being hijacked by the demon. A bloodstained sheet had been left there, perfect until Dean found clothes.

"Now to just get over there."

It was about six feet but it might as well have been the Grand Canyon. He pushed himself off the counter, caught his balance, and tried to take a step. Something went wrong between Dean's mind and Sam's limbs and he stumbled, nearly smashing his chin on the edge of a table before hitting the floor.

 _Dude!_

 _I didn't do it on purpose._

 _That hurt._

Dean got up again, now close enough to grab at the sheet. But his fingers wouldn't cooperate properly.

"Dammit."

 _You're going to get us booted back to the Collective Unconscious,_ Sam grumbled.

 _Just shut up and let me drive._ Dean stared at Sam's hand, trying to picture it not as someone else's, but as a glove. He pulled it on. In doing so he became more aware of it, and he curled each finger, touching them to his thumb, before picking up the sheet and wrapping it around himself.

 _That's better._

Dean said nothing, uncomfortable again. After treading into Sam's personal memories, he'd resolved to keep himself to himself as much as possible. But in order to take full control of Sam's body, he was going to have to do the exact opposite.

 _Dude, if I wasn't okay with it, I wouldn't have suggested it_ , said Sam, feeling more than hearing Dean's struggles. _Actually, I'm not okay with it. But we gotta do this._

 _Why couldn't_ you _have possessed_ me _?_

 _Better a shoe too big than a shoe too small._

 _Pretty sure it wouldn't have made a difference._

 _You've never been possessed. I didn't want to put a black mark on your record. Stop wasting time. Ewah could be up to anything out there._

"Fine. Whatever," said Dean aloud. Then he grimaced, one hand going to his cheek, mouth open. "Man. When did you get hit in the teeth?"

 _I didn't._

"...You gotta see a dentist, bro."

 _Stop poking it!_

They both heard a groan. Dean shuffled around the table, spotting a scrawny leg on the floor in front of the stainless steel body fridges. He moved closer.

 _Oh my God,_ said Sam. _Garth!_

"Garth!" Dean tried to go to him, but again, he stumbled like a drunkard in clown shoes. Pressing away Sam's impatience, he crawled the rest of the way, shaking Garth by the shoulder.

"Hey, Garth, buddy."

The hunter groaned again and opened his eyes. They were unfocused, and he blinked several times before looking at Dean properly. Confusion warped into terror in a heartbeat and he pressed against the wall.

"Get away!"

"Garth, it's me!"

He was too slow to duck beneath Garth's punch, taking it on the jaw. The man wasn't exactly Rocky Balboa, but his knuckles found Sam's aching molar, and Dean was stunned for several seconds, pain radiating through his skull as Garth scrambled to his feet and bolted.

"Garth, wait!" Standing, Dean turned to follow, only to throw up his hands and freeze. The sheet fell but he didn't care.

"Hey...just take it easy there, pal."

Garth kept the handgun fixed on Dean's forehead. "Don't move."

"I'm not, I'm not. Garth, it's me. It's Dean—I mean Sam. I mean—"

"What...the _hell_ , man?" He was shaking but the gun never wavered. "What the hell is going on?"

"This looks weird, I know. But just listen. We talked just a few minutes ago, remember? On the radio. I told you about the demon. I told you to give Sam an adrenaline shot because he was crashing on me."

"Dean told me that."

"I _am_ Dean."

Garth's brow creased. "What?"

"It was the only way we could get out of there." Dean looked to the clock, and the other hunter followed his gaze. The hostility softened.

"But...then you're..."

Dean nodded grimly. "We weren't quick enough."

"Where's Sam?"

Dean tapped his temple. "Up here with me. He says hey."

"Hey, Sam."

"...You gonna put that down, bud?"

Garth hesitated, then lowered the gun. Dean knelt and picked up the sheet, wrapping it around himself more securely, one end up over his shoulder like a toga.

"Where is the demon?"

Garth shook his head. "Dunno. You— I mean it used Sam's body to knock me out." He glanced at the examiner sleeping in the swivel chair, his face once more lined with concern. "Lilly's gone."

Dean nodded his chin at the old woman. "Who's that?"

"Dr Corrigan. Lilly said she's dreamwalking, but I don't know where."

Both Sam and Dean felt a stirring of suspicion, but while Dean wanted to press the matter, Sam relayed his urgency with mental pulses. He thought of an image of the interior of the Impala, and Dean knew right away he was suggesting that they update each other on the way.

"First things first," said Dean. "I need some clothes. Then we need to go."

"They should be around here somewhere. As well as stopping these guys from cutting out your giblets I made sure your clothes didn't go to the incinerator."

"Good, because I'd rather not wander around like a Greek hero." Even though that would have amused him greatly, it might get him arrested.

Sam scoffed inwardly. _Check those cupboards by the door, Achilles._

Dean made to obey, but in taking his weight off one leg, the other tried to buckle. He caught the edge of the table before he could fall.

"What's with you?" Garth demanded.

Dean's smile was sheepish. "This possessing thing isn't as easy as it looks."

He tried to ignore Sam's annoyance as he finally did as he had to – totally taking control of his brother's corpse, from head to foot, filling the suit until he could wiggle each toe and raise his eyebrows individually. He didn't like it, as it was akin to pressing into Sam's most personal memories. At the same time, wearing the other man's body made him feel stronger than he normally would be. Either that came with the gig, or...

 _I think I have some catching up to do,_ said Dean sheepishly. _Glad I never asked you to arm wrestle._

Sam said nothing, but his amusement was there.

Dean took a step, then another. A bit robotic but he got smoother with every stride. He made it over to the cupboards near the door and opened them to find plastic tubs stuffed with their attire. He began riffling through, grabbing what he needed.

My _clothes, Dean, not yours_ , Sam reminded balefully.

 _I was just looking for my keys_ , he countered.

 _I know everything you've been thinking, dude. You were not looking for your keys._

 _Your hair's really annoying, you know._

 _Get used to it... Don't even think about it!_

Dean smirked, staring at a tray lined with scissors and other sharp implements.

"Where's the Impala?" he asked over his shoulder as he pulled on jeans. Garth had turned away to give him privacy, standing over by Dean's corpse on the other gurney.

"Impounded. Evidence. Don't worry, I got everything we need. Hopefully."

Dean turned to see Garth had pulled down the sheet shrouding his remains and was about to cover him back up.

"Wait." Pulling on Sam's jacket, he wove his way over to the gurney. "How do I look?"

"Dead as a door nail," said Garth, stepping aside.

Dean gazed down at himself, making note of the acid burns on his face and damaged anti-possession tattoo on his chest. But the neck wounds he'd feared would be there were absent. Without a word, Dean covered the corpse up and helped Garth slide it into the body fridge, latching it shut.

 _...Where do you think we should start looking?_

Dean was about to relay Sam's question when he realized he already knew the answer, and upon conjuring it, Sam automatically downloaded it too.

 _I think you're right_ , he said.

 _If this wasn't so creepy, it would have been awesome_.

 _I think I'd take separate bodies, personally._

 _Live a little, Sammy._

"Where are we going?" asked Garth, watching his friend. He smothered a smile. He could tell Dean was behind the wheel of the Sam-mobile just by the way he stood, and by his bald eagle visage.

"Where this crap show started," said Dean/Sam. He smeared a tear of ectoplasm off his cheek. "The woods."


	43. Debriefing

**1:18 AM**

* * *

~43~ Debriefing

Four people slipped out of the examination room. Two occupied one body and manned the handgun. The third pushed the fourth in a swivel chair, careful not to spill her.

"Blood." Garth paused in the hallway, staring at the door. He was no spatter analyst, but it looked like someone's head was used as a battering ram – then they got up and walked away.

"There's more," said Dean/Sam, nodding his chin.

Dean was getting better at walking in Sam's body and didn't stumble once as he strode several paces further down the hallway. He knelt, grimacing, poking at a silver charm bracelet lying amidst drips of blood. They had not yet dried.

 _It's Lilly's_ , thought Sam despondently. _I recognize it from when I talked to her this morning._

 _Think that's her blood on the door?_ asked Dean.

 _Dunno._

"Guys." Garth was peering closely at the door. He raised a hand, pinching something stuck to the blood. "Black hair. I think it's the detective's."

"Detective?"

"Roberts. I mentioned him earlier on the walkie-talkie. He didn't seem to want to hear the whole story about what's really out there, but he didn't arrest me, so I don't think he was totally out of the loop." His expression darkened. "I'll bet the demon island-hopped from Sam's meat suit to his, which could only mean..."

Dean held up Lilly's bracelet, stained scarlet. "Sorry, man."

Garth wiped his fingers on his pants, fighting to keep himself together. Although crisp, Lilly seemed like a decent person to have a cup of tea with – after this mess had been sorted.

"Guess that's the last of the Corvus bloodline," he said. "They are now extinct."

"Not quite." Both Dean's learned knowledge and Sam's assumptions collided and Dean struggled what to say first. So he looked at the woman in the swivel chair, who appeared to be in the deepest of sleeps without actually being dead. A crow feather was trapped in an iron grip.

Garth followed his gaze. "Dr Corrigan?"

"Possibly," said Dean. "She might even think that's her name, if she can't remember her real one."

Sam's confusion distracted Dean like a child tugging on his shirt, until he gave the child a treat. He imagined dumping a file folder on Sam's lap as he sat shotgun in the mental Impala; all the information he had learned after narrowly escaping Ewah, when he found himself trapped in the silo room. How the demon had been rediscovered, why no one could enter the grounds of the estate, who was responsible for whose deaths, everything. Sam absorbed it all instantly, for thought was faster than the written word.

 _Where did you get all this?_ he asked, astonishment evident.

 _Before I found you, I spoke with...someone._

 _Who?_

 _I... I can't remember._

 _What do you mean, you can't remember...?_ Sam gleaned more memory from Dean's mental database. _Whoa. Weird._

Dean nodded. _I remember everything we talked about but whoever I talked to just...it's like they don't exist anymore. I can't recall squat about them._

 _...We can worry about that later. Dude, this is huge._

 _Don't need to tell me._

"Dean. _Dean_."

He jerked. "Huh? What?"

"Think I lost you there for a moment, partner," said Garth with a goofy smile. "You gonna explain what you meant?"

"About what?"

"About _her_." He gestured at Dr Corrigan.

"Oh, right. But on the way – let's go."

Once more they set off, Garth pushing the "doctor" down the hall while Dean led the way, scouting for danger. He figured Ewah was long gone, but it never hurt to be wary. And with a dead cop on their hands, there was a chance of things going seriously sour real quick.

Dean kicked the back door open, scanning the lot before heading for Garth's truck. The smaller hunter was quick to follow, but he was more cautious, checking the shadows carefully.

"Got any copper?"

He looked to Dean. "What?"

"Copper. Pure copper. We'll need it."

"Um, yeah. A copper bowl. Here, you get her in the truck, I'll find it for you."

While Dean scooped up the old examiner and put her in the middle seat of the cab, Garth clambered into the bed and pulled off the bungee cords keeping a tarp over his affects. He unlocked the large aluminum box and rummaged through, fishing out his copper bowl.

"Hey, what else we gonna need? I got a variety of herbs and stuff. Some nice candles—"

"We're not summoning anything, Garth." Dean took the bowl and climbed into the passenger seat. He wasn't so comfortable in Sam's meat suit that he trusted himself to drive. "Get in."

Garth obeyed, but not before grabbing some iron, silver, salt, and a few guns. He wasn't sure what they'd need – this was no hellspawn they were hunting – but at least they won't be arriving at their destination unarmed.

"Alright, spill," he said, twisting the key in the ignition. The truck rumbled to life.

Dean held up the bowl. "This is going to help us find the demon's prison. I was told that copper can lead to hidden enchantments. I'm not sure how. I'll need her to wake up and tell me." He jerked his head at the woman between them.

"Right. And who is she, if not Dr Corrigan?"

"I'm not a hundred percent sure," said Dean, "but my money's on her being Agnes, the only one to escape the Corvus bloodbath."

Garth stared at him too long and took the corner too tightly, running over a curb. Dean's head cracked on the roof of the cab and he scowled.

 _Ouch_ , said Sam.

"It's a long story, but I'll tell it as briefly as I can..."

They were rumbling up to Corvus Manor by the time he finished, headlights illuminating the front gate. The night was moonless but the mansion was clearly seen, a dark mass with a darker secret.

Garth was silent for several seconds, taking it all in. This was so different from anything he'd ever had to face, and it was daunting.

"So...we're going after a demon that's probably immune to holy water and iron, and who can drive you to nuts just by meeting your eye. Silver tickles it but it's a no to devil's traps, exorcisms, and the demon blade."

"Yep."

"And it's coming here because you think it's going to go to its prison in the woods and free the rest of itself."

"Yep."

"Okay. So why now? Why wait until you two came around to jump across the veil?"

"I think because it wasn't strong enough," said Dean. "On the last day, the demon was nearly destroyed by a spell cast by a witch." He puzzled again at the hole in his memory. He knew it was the witch he spoke to but he could not recall a face or name. He shook his head. "Once Sam and I died, and our souls belonged to the demon, it siphoned the strength off its domain and used Sam's consciousness to steal his body." He half shrugged. "We were its Wheaties. The last little bit it needed to be strong enough."

"Why is it when something like this happens, it's always you two?"

"I stopped asking that myself a long time ago, Garth."

He snorted. "So, what. We gotta get to the prison before it does?"

"Yeah." Dean climbed out of the truck. Garth followed suit, leaving the door open so he could talk to Dean through the cab. "What happens if the whole demon is released, do you figure?"

"Don't even want to think about it." Dean unbuckled Agnes and pulled her over to the passenger seat, then picked her up. She was as light as a bird. Speaking of birds...

He looked up, brow furrowed, at the disgruntled cawing that arose once Agnes was out in the open. Setting her down, he fished a flashlight out of the glove compartment and shone it up. Dozens of crows glared down at them from the trees. It was nighttime. What the hell was their problem?

Sam tried to talk to him but Dean brushed him off, kneeling beside Agnes.

"So how do we snap her out of this?"

"Lilly said we shouldn't. Something bad might happen."

Dean scowled. "We can't carry her with us like an old dead goose. We have to try something."

Garth was in the back of his truck again, digging through the storage box in search of anything that might be of use. "Smelling salts, maybe?"

Dean paused, then shrugged. "Worth a shot."

Garth tossed him a snuffbox of it and kept going through his stuff.

Dean was almost surprised when it worked, the old woman's eyes fluttering open at the pungent salts held under her nose. She gazed up at him without comprehension, and he knew that it was the memory spell Ewah had put on her to punish...punish someone else.

Her face suddenly twisted with alarm. "You're dead."

Dean was about to correct her, then decided she was right.

"Could say that. But you've met me, Agnes. You've met me and my brother, in your childhood home. You helped us out a few times, remember?"

"W-what? I don't understand. Where are we?" She looked at the feather in her hand and frowned. "What's this for?"

"You know what it's for." Dean leaned to draw her attention back to him. She had to remember Sam's face, not from just being on the cutting block. "You used it to get into the Collective Unconscious, where a demon has trapped the souls of your family."

"Dreamwalking," said Garth.

"Yeah, that. Hey, look at me. Look at me, Agnes."

"My name's not Agnes," she said softly, looking scared now.

"Yeah it is. Agnes Corvus. Granddaughter of Thomas and Ariel Corvus."

"No! My family name is Corrigan. My...my mother..."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Your mother...? Your real mom died a hundred and fifty years ago. Agnes. I need you to remember. You would have remembered not long ago because when you did, you dreamwalked to the Collective Unconscious and helped me. You saved me from the demon."

She flinched at the last word, a line creasing her brow. He wanted so desperately to say Ewah's name but Sam's waves of warning reminded him that it might be the worst thing he could do right now.

"Maybe if we brought her into the manor," said Garth.

Dean shook his head. "Can't get in the grounds. I told you, when Agnes was under the demon's influence, she put up barriers that prevented anyone from entering the grounds."

Agnes didn't look so scared anymore, but her face wasn't brightening with remembrance either.

 _Dean, this is taking too long. We need to go_ , said Sam.

"Garth, keep talking with her. Try and get her to remember. Maybe she can take down the barrier and...I don't know. Maybe there's something in the house that might help us."

"Where are you going?"

Dean stood, holding up the copper bowl. "Like I said, the demon has to be stopped before it releases itself entirely."

"Wait."

He turned to Agnes, eyebrows raised. She was staring at the bowl as though it meant something to her. Hesitant, he held it out, and she took it, tilting it this way and that so ribbons of light danced along its rim. She muttered something into it, then quickly gave it back.

"I don't know why I said that."

"What did you say?"

"...I don't remember."

Dean sagged with exasperation, turning away. Then he straightened, staring at the bowl. It was lightly shivering in his grasp. When he faced another direction, it stopped. Facing southeast again, it shivered.

"Son of a bitch."

"What?" said Garth.

"Whatever she did, she made it work. I can find the demon's prison now." He tucked the bowl in an inside pocket, where he would feel it against his stomach. "Keep her safe, Garth. I'll be back before morning. Maybe."

"Sir, yes, sir! Here." Garth passed him a rifle and a utility belt equipped with a machete. "You can't touch salt or iron, of course, but there are some rock salt rounds in that pouch and iron filings in that one. Plus some silver, holy water and holy oil, a few herbs and some matches." He pointed to other pouches. "Hopefully something will help."

"Thanks, Garth." He belted it around his waist, then pulled the rifle strap over his shoulder. "If you start smelling swamp water, run. And whatever you do, don't touch that gate." Dean glanced once more up at the numerous crows, then set off into the woods.


	44. Ambush

**1:59 AM**

* * *

~44~ Ambush

Dean should have enjoyed being back in civilization – with electricity and plumbing and vending machines – while he had the chance. Now he was back in the dark, weaving between trees and shrubs with nothing to guide him but a copper bowl and a flashlight. At least the light was bigger, unlike Sam's dinky little one.

 _Hey, that 'dinky little one' kept you alive in that house._

 _Dammit, Sam, learn when to not eavesdrop on my thoughts._

 _I'm bored._

 _Then try and think up a way to defeat Ewah. There must be something we overlooked. If one Native woman could do it a thousand years ago with no guns or silver..._

Dean's progress was loud and slow. The utility belt Garth had given him was equipped with a machete, which he used to slash a path through the undergrowth. He couldn't get lost; the summoning bowl in his inside pocket stopped shivering if he faced the wrong way. Copper, he'd learned, could locate hidden enchantments. Which meant he would be able to find Ewah's prison and, hopefully, stop the demon from freeing its own full form and power. How they were going to do that, he had no idea.

A branch slipped past his hand and whipped him across the face.

 _Dude, watch the paint job,_ Sam grumbled.

 _Whoopsie-daisy!_ He did try to be more careful, though. Whatever he felt, Sam felt. The only way to protect him would be to shove him into a box, the trunk of their mental Impala. But then he wouldn't be able to see or give Dean any input, and he couldn't do this alone.

 _Less thinking and more swinging, Dean._

 _Your arm is weak._

 _My arm is part of a corpse. You're the one giving it strength. Now get a move on. I'd rather face a portion of Ewah than the full deal._

 _Man, it could be_ miles _away._ He readjusted the rifle strap and started off again. Sam's sarcastic retort was stifled before Dean could make any sense of it.

The forest was dense and grew denser the further he went. It would have been impossible to get a vehicle through the ranks of grey trunks. At least Ewah would be just as slow, in a meat suit of its own, fighting through a woods it would no longer recognize. Whether its vessel be Detective Roberts or Lilly Andersen, he didn't know, but the thought of that monster wandering around out there made Dean do the occasional 360.

Whether the demon be near or far, he wasn't alone.

 _They're following us._

Dean had heard them too. How many, he couldn't say, but at least two. Crows were noisy flyers, and none of them seemed to be hitting any branches as they tailed the Winchesters, despite the night.

 _You know what they are, right?_

 _What?_ thought Dean.

 _They aren't real crows. Remember what...that person you've forgotten told you. About the valkyries._

 _You can't be serious._ Dean paused, pointing the flashlight up warily. Something flew through the beam of light.

 _Come on. There was that painting we had to find and return to the gallery, 'the valkyries over hills of blue.' I think that was a hint. They've been here ever since they were summoned in the 1840's, trying to help the Corvus family move on._

 _Well if they are bird ladies in disguise, we don't have time to detour to Valhalla_ , said Dean. _Should I shoot them?_

 _No. They haven't come after us yet. They probably won't for some time. Maybe they're waiting to see what we do._

Dean ended the conversation with a grunt, marching on through the woods under the guidance of a copper bowl.

Miles passed underfoot. Sam was doing as his brother had bidden, power-watching their recorded experiences in the manor. To Dean it was like hearing a television in another room, his brother voicing observations as he tried to find anything of importance.

 _Well, just got to the part when we separated the last time. Mind if I keep going through your memories?_

 _Go ahead_ , said Dean, but his discomfort was impossible to hide.

 _Hey, this is a judgment-free zone._

 _Didn't you kind of already see what happened? You kept talking to me when I was alone, like you are now. My own Jiminy Cricket._

 _I... Kind of. I don't really remember anything after you left on your own. I always felt like I knew where you were, though, and imagined myself helping you... Does that make sense?_

It didn't when spoken aloud, but their mental link allowed Dean to feel what Sam meant, which for some reason made it all sensible.

Sam combed through Dean's memories more closely, as they were of events leading up to the big finish: their failure. He watched him struggle to climb the stairs from the cellar, how he was dissuaded from reaching the top floor via the foyer and was forced to go for the servants' passage in the music room. He groaned when the replica of himself ripped Dean's throat out, even though he knew Dean's body in the real world did not reflect that particular, mortal wound; they had checked before sticking his body back in the fridge in the morgue.

Sam mentally nodded with approval as Dean got around the monster and reached the second floor.

Then he got to the memory of Agnes the crow leading Dean into the day room, where his reflection in the mirror gave him a small hand mirror.

 _Forgot about that_ , said Dean.

 _What did you use it for?_

 _Nothing, it was just a mirror._

 _Maybe..._

Dean felt Sam retreat again to think about it some more, and let him. If it kept him from contemplating their fates that was fine by him.

As much of a workout hiking through the forest was, Dean was freezing. It hadn't been nice that day and the air had teeth, biting through his clothes and sucking out the warmth he made from movement. He was practically a corpse. He had no heartbeat and couldn't sweat so why the hell should he feel cold?

He focused bitterly so much at that, he didn't notice an hour go by, bringing the stench of bog to the edge of his senses.

 _Sam, we're here._

His brother surfaced from the back of his mind, where he was still hunting for a weapon to use against the monster.

 _Maybe_ Fabreeze _would have worked against it_ , he grunted, for he smelled what Dean smelled.

Dean toggled into stalk mode, which he immediately botched by tripping over a root and sprawling into a bush. Still not quite used to Sam's longer limbs.

 _Smooth._

 _Shut up._ Dean remained low. He heard nothing in the forest but the sigh of the wind. Even the crows had stopped flying. He didn't look for them. Back on his feet, he crept forward, approaching the mire. The copper bowl was buzzing in his pocket and he took it out, setting it on the ground to eliminate the irritation. Then a few feet further and he was gazing into a clearing sunk in an unnatural swamp. It looked just as it did when the brothers watched the memory in which a portion of Ewah was released by...the person he still could not remember.

 _We need to find that rock_ , said Sam, conjuring a mental image of the egg-sized stone carved with Cherokee characters. Hopefully, if they found it and put it back where it had been dug up, it would seal the demon away for good. Or at the very least, prevent Ewah from releasing its full potential long enough for the brothers to defeat this portion of it.

 _The person who dug it up threw it in that direction, I think_. Dean stared at a tree thicker than the others around it, on the opposite side of the swamp. It was only about twenty feet away, but it would be like shining a spotlight on himself to step out in the open.

 _Ewah isn't here. Just run across._

Dean's automatic response of "cover me" almost made it past his lips, and he sensed Sam's amusement as clearly as if he'd chuckled aloud. Waving him off, he checked the swamp again, panning the flashlight across it. Bubbles breaking the surface of the water was the only movement.

 _Go._

He lurched up from a crouch and made ready to dash, but he only took two steps before something slammed into him from behind, sending him flying into the water. He tried to catch himself but his arms sunk up to his elbows in icy muck and he got a mouthful of water anyway. The flashlight landed on a tangle of reeds, cradled just above the water. The machete vanished.

Sam's alarm bells clashed with Dean's in a mental cacophony that was of no use to either of them. He couldn't get up before a hand pressed against the back of his head and pressed it into the water, into the mud. He thrashed and kicked and tried to push himself up, but his arms kept sinking deeper.

 _Dean, stop panicking! You don't need to breathe._

It took a few seconds for the recollection to register, and Dean stopped struggling. The hand pushed on his head once more, then pulled away, allowing him to raise it and spit out a mouthful of mud.

"You do not know when to quit, do you."

It was an unfamiliar voice, male. Probably Detective Roberts. Dean shook his head to clear his eyes of black mud. He tugged at one arm, then the other, but both were stuck fast.

"Sorry." He spat. "Not part of the job."

"You _died_."

"That, however, _is_ part of the job." Dean smiled, teeth a stark contrast to his blackened face.

Ewah hissed. "I'm glad you're here. Your vessel is sssstrong. It will hold me for many a year."

"No, it won't. Because we're gonna kick your ass."

"Difficult to accomplish when your ssstuck like a pig!"

Cold steel hovered just below his throat and he froze, not only from fear but from the odd sensation the diluted iron felt near his skin. It made his vision warp and his limbs tingle. He chanced a look down. It was his machete.

"You can't kill me," said Dean, forcing a smile.

"Actually, I can. But..." The machete retracted, and his eyes followed a pair of black trousers trudge through the swamp to stand in front of him. The demon crouched, arms resting on its thighs, hands hanging between its knees. "I won't. Instead, I offer you freedom."

He had an inkling of an idea what the demon meant about freedom, and it wasn't appealling.

"Thanks. I'll pass." Dean stared at the water, at the dark reflections he and the demon made. He was surprised at the strength of the temptation to look up. And it didn't help when Ewah put a hand under his chin and tried to lift his head. Gently at first, but with growing pressure.

"Look at me."

The strain of resisting fanned from the back of his neck, between his shoulder blades. He kept trying to pull his right arm free, wiggling it back and forth to breach the mud vacuum while his mind raced to figure out how they were going to get out of this.

The pressure under his chin intensified.

"Look into my eyes."

"Have you ever considered that maybe I'm just not that into you? _Augh!_ " His face scrunched as Ewah seized a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back, pain flaring down his neck. He screwed his eyes shut, knowing that one look into the demon's gaze and they were toast.

 _Just another reason why long hair's a bad idea, Sammy!_

But Sam said nothing. Bothered, Dean prodded around, only to find that where Sam had been riding shotgun was now boxed off, as though he were protecting himself. Shocked and a little disappointed, Dean turned his focus back to the demon.

"How 'bout we settle this like men, eh?" he said, trying to smile. He winced as Ewah pulled his head back further. "Mono e mono. Or if you rather, mono e douche-o."

Hissing again, the demon released him and he gratefully lowered his head, grunting. But his relief was short lived, for Ewah's hand gripped him by the jaw, squeezing until his lips puckered.

"What is your brother doing in there? Does he not know he cannot hide anything from me? I will ssshow him."

Dean heard a sickening, ripping sound, like tearing flesh, and his guts knotted themselves into balloon animals. The demon forced his mouth open.

"You know, I 'ot really in'o doin' this on a firs' da'e," he tried to say. Something small, slimy and warm was pushed between his lips. Before he could spit it out, Ewah clapped its hand over his mouth, and he recoiled as the little squid thing squirmed around in there. He tried to catch the invader with his teeth but it got to the back of his throat and up into his nasal cavity, making his eyes water and his gross-metre fly off the charts.

Sloshing water told him that the demon had stepped back, as though to get a better view of the spectacle. Dean shuddered, stomach writhing with nausea, mouth open to gag. Globs of spit fell into the water, leaving small floating islands of bubbles. He thought his nose was bleeding, for what dripped out of it was hot, but some dribbled back into his throat and he could almost taste it. Whatever it was, it wasn't blood.

 _Sam? Where are you?_

He couldn't even feel his brother's mind. He couldn't feel his vessel anymore either. It was like he was drifting away from everything tangible, a breath in the wind.

Ewah watched as the man's head drooped, chest like bellows, unable to get enough air. Despite his tough demeanour, he was rank with fear, him and his brood mate, and to the demon that was fuel. The mind was so much more _alive_ when it was afraid.

Suddenly the one called Dean, in the vessel of the one called Sam, convulsed, then collapsed. Arms still trapped in the mud, it was a pathetic display as Ewah's parasite did its job, leaving nothing more than a lump of meat half submerged in the swamp. The demon turned away. It had work to do.


	45. Psychosis

**3:33 AM**

* * *

~45~ Psychosis

Dean knew their plan had well and truly gone down the crapper when he stopped feeling the parasite squirming around in his sinuses. Back was the sensation he'd gotten used to after spending hours in Corvus Manor – he was nothing more than a shaped figment of congealed thoughts and memories, not alive in the normal sense but not completely dead either.

He opened his eyes. He was in a box, a room with no doors or windows, lying on a tiled floor stained with blood and Lord knew what else. The walls and ceiling were solid mirrors but mold made it impossible for him to see his reflections in full. There was no light source but he could see. He had no shadow. The metallic stench was so strong he tasted pennies.

Dean sat up with a groan and looked at himself. He seemed to be okay even though he felt like he'd spent the last few minutes strapped to a rocket.

He heard air hissing through teeth. Twisting his upper body around, he then rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the corner. There, a cage no bigger than a dog kennel contained a single form. Sam was scrunched into the smallest ball possible, hands on the back of his head, face in his knees. His hair and clothes pressed against the rusty bars, the cage was so small. By his moans, Dean knew he wouldn't unravel even if the cage hadn't encapsulated his rather pathetic position.

"Sam! Hey, Sam!" Dean gripped the bars, but that single touch was like an electric shock that sent him rolling onto his rear, blinking.

"Alright," he said, getting up and turning to face the rest of the room. "I can do that."

In that moment of contact, Sam had relayed every word and emotion needed to convince Dean to not worry about freeing him, but to simply stand guard. He had no idea what Sam was up to, but he had a plan, and that was a shot better than Dean's standpoint.

* * *

Sam was only vaguely aware that a large portion of his psyche was in growing discomfort. The part of him that mattered – his consciousness – remained clinging like a limpet to his body on earth. He couldn't move it, but at least he was there and not wherever Ewah had forced Dean to go.

He could still sense Dean, and the rest of himself. Sam was holding one end of a rope and they were holding the other at the end of a long tunnel. Dean tried to talk to him once and in doing so, almost pulled the rest of Sam with him into the Subconscious. His Subconscious. That's where the demon had tried to make them both go, Sam decided. What it intended to do to them there, he didn't want to find out. Couldn't find out. Morbid curiosity was squashed into the trashcan, along with the little voice that just wanted him to _give up_.

Unable to move his own corpse, Sam could only listen to Ewah sloshing through the swamp around him, no doubt trying to figure out how to break the wards keeping the rest of itself imprisoned. That worked for him. So long as it didn't know he was still there, he would have time to figure out what the hell he was going to do.

 _Come on, fingers, move!_

Unfortunately for him, his arms were still elbow-deep in swamp muck, body keeled over, face in the water. A least he didn't need to breathe.

Wait. How did he know he was still elbow-deep and keeled over? Because Sam could feel the way his body was positioned.

As though to confirm it, he began to feel exceptionally uncomfortable, the strain of his trapped arms spreading to his shoulders and back. He wanted to move to relieve the tension but the control slipped away again and again, smoke between his fingers.

Sam heard a crocodilian hiss of triumph that twisted into a snarl annoyance.

"Why must you continue to thwart me?"

Sam felt a wiggle of hope. Maybe the demon could find the seal stones, but it could not unearth them. But that hope was corrupted at the feeling of the monster's hand on his upper back, grabbing a fistful of his jacket. With one tug, it pulled him out of the mud. Two muddy fingers tapped against his forehead.

"Wake."

Sam's eyes opened to behold an unfamiliar face. Short black hair, greying at the temples, forehead and nose mashed to a pulp. The blood was mixed with a rancid black goo. Sam had no doubt this man was dead and possessed by his latest foe, whose eyes were closed to prevent his prey from becoming useless with insanity.

"I know you're in there, Sam," Ewah cooed. The words came not from the man's lips but in Sam's head, calming and seductive. He listened despite himself.

"You're going to do what I ask you. You're going to do this simple task for me, and then you will give me your vessel. In return I shall leave you and your brother in a sleep so deep you won't be aware any longer. You will not know what happens here, and you will not care. There will be no pain. Will you do this?"

Sam nodded.

"Very good, Sam. Look there. The earth sings, can you hear it? Go, and dig it up. And once you have what sings, cast it away and look for another. Find all three and I shall release you." Ewah let go of his collar and Sam fell to his hands and knees. He was weak but unconcerned, rising to a half-stand and shambling to the point Ewah had indicated. The ground rose above the water here and was soft despite the encroaching winter. It was easy to dig.

* * *

Dean knew he'd been forced into this mirror room to be kept out of the way. Logic only suggested that he try to escape. But the lack of doors and windows was a bit of a setback.

He paced, only catching patched reflections through the mold on the mirrors. His feet clicked over the sticky tiled floor. He was thirsty.

A moan. Dean whirled to the corner where the cage sat.

"Sam?"

His brother trembled but did not answer.

"Where are we, man?" Dean turned away, gazing up and around. Five mirrors, four eternal tunnels created by the reflections of reflections, each with a row of Deans glaring back at him. He turned to study each of them, only to stop at the forth.

He frowned. It was obscured by mildew like the others, but he should still be able to see himself a little bit.

He approached it cautiously, and when he was but feet away he waved his arms. Nothing. No reflection whatsoever. He looked around, every other twin meeting his eye. He snorted.

"Another damn puzzle."

He faced the offending mirror again, only to flinch and step back. Someone was coming down the tunnel of reflections, as though they weren't reflections at all. And it wasn't Dean.

"...Cas?"

But the moment the name passed over his tongue, he knew it wasn't his friend. The figure was short and wore a trench coat, but it was dark and stained, and its face was blurred. Dean reached up and wiped the mirror with his sleeve. Mold flakes crumbled away but the figure's face remained in a fog.

They stopped feet before passing through the last mirror. Dean blinked. Suddenly the figure had wings, black, arching over its head, feathers long and fused to the floor. But this was no angel.

"The hell..."

The figure raised an arm, pointing at Dean. Then its arm swung around to point behind itself. Dean's reflection was missing; Sam's was not. The pointing finger landed on him and his cage, and Dean's guts twisted even more.

"You leave him alone, you—!"

A shriek of metal, a cry of pain. Dean whirled around just in time to see the cage shrink, compressing in on itself, on Sam. His little brother moaned but said not a word. Not a cry for help or mercy. A defeated animal.

"Stop!"

The cage shrank again. Sam screamed.

Dean whirled to the winged figure. "What do you want?"

The dark one cocked its head. Dean slapped his hand against the mirror. Or perhaps it was a window.

"Who are you?"

Its head cocked the other way. It lowered its arm. Suddenly its wings flared, and in a flicker it vanished, and Dean was glaring at his own reflection.

He turned away, glancing at the other three walls and the ceiling. But for Sam, he was alone again.

* * *

It took several minutes of hard digging, in which Sam's nails split and bled, but he found the ward stone buried by the Natives centuries ago. It was a river stone, flat and wide and smooth, carved with Cherokee letters that meant nothing to him. It was warm and the letters glowed. He threw it like a discus into the forest, unconcern at the ripple of energy that passed through the ground at his deed, and awaited further orders.

"Here, Sam. Dig here." In Detective Roberts' meat suit, Ewah pointed to the ground several feet away from where Sam was kneeling in the swamp. "The earth sings. Can't you hear it?"

He nodded even though no, he could not. He was just a zombie. A slave to the demon's will. He staggered through the water, stumbling over every obstacle, to where Ewah waited patiently. There, he fell to his knees again and began digging. There were more roots here. It would be some time before he found the next ward stone.

* * *

Dean paced around and around the mirror room, trying to not look at his suffering brother, who released the occasional groan of pain in his too-small cage. His breathing was short and shallow and he never reacted when Dean spoke to him.

Why?

Around and around. The room didn't change. He expected the dark figure to reappear and torture his brother some more, and the longer he waited the more anxious he became. Surely it would be there when he turned to follow the next mirror. The next one. The next one.

Sam's pained gasps became the only thing he heard. And with every passing minute they became less of human suffering and more of an irritation.

"I know it hurts," he snapped before he could stop himself, yet the words kept coming out. "Just be quiet, I need to think."

Sam whimpered. Dean turned away and circled the room three more times, gritting his teeth as the sounds did not cease.

"I can't help you!"

He could see Sam's fingers poking out of the top of the cage, grasping at nothing. Shame like nothing he'd ever felt before hit Dean like a kick to the guts, and he took a step towards his brother, only to freeze when something flashed by his peripherals. When he turned his head, his reflection in that mirror was gone.

He didn't even look for the dark figure.

"Stay away from him!" He stepped towards his brother, then recoiled as the cage compressed again, eliciting a wail so pitiful Dean covered his ears. Only when it withered to whimpers did he lower his hands and turn to the mirror in which his reflection had taken a hike. Or so he thought.

Someone was there but it wasn't the dark figure of before. It was himself, standing up close to its side of the mirror, deadpan and stiff shouldered. Dean moved to meet it toe to toe.

"Now who's this handsome devil?"

But handsome he was not. He looked utterly exhausted, bags with their own bags under his eyes, skin caked with blood and sweat, blistered burns bubbling diagonally across his face. There was black stuff under his nose, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. His twin did not.

As he studied himself, he was growing more and more annoyed, and he finally came to realize it was because Sam was crying like a little baby.

"Can it, Sam. Save some for later."

Why did he just say that? Oh, because he meant it.

He turned back to his reflection. "What are you gawking at?"

It was no longer gazing at him, but at something over its shoulder, at the corner opposite of Sam's cage. Dean looked over his own shoulder. Lying in the corner was a revolver. Looked to be the same one he'd carried around Corvus Manor. He walked over and picked it up, checking the chambers.

"Hmph. One bullet." Dean closed the cylinder and gave it a spin, turning to face the rest of the room. "Anyone up for some roulette?" He waved the gun around at his reflections, at Sam, at his own head. "I'm feeling like a lucky punk today."

He aimed it at his temple.

 _Click_.

He spun the cylinder again and pointed it at his immobile twin.

 _Click_.

Another spin. Aimed at his brother.

 _Click_.

Dean smirked as Sam's pained gasp was timed perfectly with the dry fire.

"Thought you would have wanted this, Sammy." Spin. Aim. _Click_. His own brains didn't fly out of his skull so he spun the cylinder and aimed again at his reflection. "Thought you would want the chance to be free."

 _Click_. Dean smiled at his twin, which wasn't so stolid and stiff anymore. In fact it looked scared.

"Always the baby. Always the luggage." Spin went the cylinder, click went the hammer. He did it again to himself, and again was spared. "See, I get it now..." To his reflection. "Whenever I wanted them to stop, whenever I tried to defend you, Sam, your cage shrank. I'm crushing you. I've always crushed you." Click. Dean didn't spin the cylinder, instead swinging the revolver over to his helpless brother. "Always smothered you, never let you live a life of your own. You were safer with me. We were safer together and I couldn't bear the thought of you being out on your own, living a normal life, even if it made you happy."

The barrel was aimed right at Sam's head. Dean stared at the pitiful display, then glanced up at his twin. It was now pressed against its side of the mirror, panic twisting its face into something most unbecoming. Dean smirked.

"But you liked it, didn't you, Sammy? The mothering. Because you're a little bitch." With his will alone he made the cage smaller, bars buckling, pressing inwards. Sam's cry was weak from lack of air. "Do you like it now?" Again he shrank it, until it was impossible for his brother to take in breath, and thus was silent. Something broke. Probably a rib. "I think I prefer this, myself. Much quieter."

His reflection was now banging on its side of the mirror, screaming threats. Dean heard nothing. He cupped a hand around his ear.

"What's that? Kill him? Makes sense to me. It frees him, it frees me. Two birds, one bullet."

He sauntered over to Sam, who could only quiver, the tiniest gasps doing nothing for him. Rogue nerves made his fingers curl and relax, as though beckoning death closer. Dean pressed the barrel to the back of his head. He was so crushed, the bars pressed against the skin of his neck, each vertebra visible.

 _Click._

 _Click._

Dean looked at his raging twin, and smiled.

 _Bang!_

* * *

The third ward stone took twice as long to unearth, as though the roots did not want Sam to get it and had grown extra thick to stop him. But Ewah had given him a command and he had to obey.

When he finally pulled the chunk of granite out of the ground, he heaved it away, and another ripple of energy vibrated through the ground beneath him. The third seal was broken.

"Finally. Now, here, Sam, here."

He turned sluggishly towards where the demon indicated and rose to his feet. He got halfway before a pain exploded through his skull, and he fell to his knees, clutching his head.

"What are you doing?" Ewah snarled. "Get up!"

Sam became aware, then, of what he was doing. Though the pain was intense his thoughts became clear, shaking off the demon's poison like a dog sheds water. But of course, he couldn't let it know this.

He began to crawl towards the demon, the water icy around his arms and legs. He hoped he still looked zombie-like, but he knew he was taking too long when Ewah sniffed the air suspiciously. Sam crawled a bit faster, until he was at the demon's feet, looking submissive.

"...You know what to do."

Sam began to dig, praying his warden would grow bored and walk away. But it didn't. It just stood there, guarding its investment. Sweat trickled down his temple. He needed a distraction. But it seemed the only one he could make meant releasing a great evil into the world – not that Sam was unfamiliar with that consequence.

He kept digging.

* * *

Dean inhaled, held it, then released, an icy smile tugging at his lips.

"Sweet silence." He turned to his twin, who continued to bash at its side of the mirror, screaming soundlessly. At his feet, Sam's blood followed the grooves between the tiles.

"You have to admit, this is much better," he said, smirking. "He never wanted any of this anyway. He always wanted out."

Dean's cheek itched. He rubbed it.

"And now, he is. He's with Mommy and Daddy in the kingdom high in the sky. And me, I'm free as a bird."

Again his face itched, and he scratched it. This time, though, a chunk of skin broke away in his hand. He looked at it, then turned to another mirror. He expected to see exposed muscle and bone but there was nothing. Just a colourless blur.

"You've always wanted to do this, Dean. Admit it. It was always there, tucked away. You had it in you, but for some complicated, human reason, you never took any of the thousands of opportunities to kill him. Hell, you even brought him _back_. And what did that get you? Forty years as a demon's bitchboy, that's what."

He tugged another flap of skin off his face, taking an eye with it. It didn't hurt. His reflection stared at him, aghast and repulsed.

"And then all the times he stabbed you in the back. Screwing a demon, letting a vampire turn you, not trying hard enough to get you out of your deal with Lilith." He was unaware that he no longer looked or sounded like himself. A chunk of his neck skin was pulled off and dropped like a wet rag. There was no blood, no pus, no pain.

"Don't look so glum, Dean. It's over now. All that's left now is to take out the trash." He pointed at the cage in the corner, and it compressed until Sam's remains began to burst from the pressure.

A click of splitting glass. Dean looked at his twin. Where it had been hitting the mirror, it had cracked. It hit it again, and the cracks spread.

"You really think you can still win this?" he scoffed. He turned to the other mirrors. Half of his face was gone. A blur on the shoulders of an unfamiliar body. "It's over, Dean. Let it go."

But it didn't. His reflection punched the mirror until his knuckles bled, but it wasn't red that dribbled over his fingers and on the glass, but something brilliant, like liquid starlight. He stared at it with fascination even as his fortress wall was breaking.

"So that's what soul juice looks like."

The mirror/window shattered, doubling the size of the room. Or maybe the mirror reconstructed itself as soon as Dean's better half came through. Dean didn't have time to check before his counterpart attacked.

He ducked beneath a right hook and retaliated with a jab. His knuckles caught him in the chin but he barely flinched, blocking the next attack and returning a punch that took Dean in the gut.

"Oof!" He straightened and struck his better half in the face but it was like hitting a dummy. His twin just kept swinging.

"Ha ha! That's the spirit!"

Suddenly he was on the defence, blocking and retreating into a corner. But this was his world now. He simply wished to be on the other side of the room and he was there, closer to Sam. His counterpart whirled around, all fury, and charged at him.

Dean knelt and picked up a shard of broken mirror quicker than a blink. Just as fast it was in his enemy's gut, stopping him cold. He gasped, eyes wide with surprise.

"You know how this works," said Dean softly. "Sam had to do the same thing, once upon a time. Dominate the other pieces of his psyche, become who he once was." He gripped his end of the mirror shard until his hand bled, and pulled his counterpart closer. "This is how it's gonna be. I'm in charge, now. I'm gonna let you stay, because you amuse me. But there will be no blubbering for poor Sammy. No remorse in doing what needs to be done. Remember how good a hunter li'l bro was when he had no soul? That'll be us now. But don't worry, Dean..." He twisted the shard, feeling soul blood ooze over his hand. "You'll get used to it."

His counterpart was growing fuzzy around the edges, and he took it that he'd won. But suddenly he was looking at two Deans, one impaled on the mirror shard, the other behind and off to the side. His smile faltered.

"Touché."

Up came a revolver, pointing between his eyes. He was about to think, _how_ , then remembered where he was. He'd picked up a gun with a single bullet, which he'd used to kill Sam. Of course there would have been a second gun in the reflection.

The revolver spat its charge without a word from its wielder. Dean felt the bullet enter his head, what was left of it, felt himself already begin to deteriorate.

"Well done," he rasped, then collapsed, head and shoulders propped up against Sam's cage.

The conscious third of Dean lowered the gun, watching his primitive, selfish, practical piece dissolve and become part of him. Then he faced off to the part that made him human. It smiled at him and nodded. The third that made Dean Dean pulled the mirror shard out of its gut and slit its throat. Then it, too, dissolved and was absorbed.

Then, there was just Dean. Whole in mind. When he turned around, he wasn't surprised to see Sam still in a cage, but no longer a tiny, crushing cage. It was big enough to hold a bear and Sam was just lying there, breathing, sleeping. It wasn't a cage forged by Dean's protection, but by Sam's own defences. Dean knew he would have one like it in his own subconscious. A safe place to go when asleep, a mental control room.

What Sam was doing now, Dean couldn't say. But he suspected it had something to do with not letting Ewah know what he was thinking. Looking around, he had a pretty good idea what Sam had in mind, and prayed that he was right.

He sat down, cross-legged, in front of the cage.

"Sam. If you can hear me, remember I'm here. Remember I can help."


	46. Liberation

**3:50 AM**

* * *

~46~ Liberation

Sam couldn't stall any longer. Ewah was growing suspicious at his progress, but for whatever reason, it did not imbue its poisonous influence on him again. If it knew he was in control of himself, it also knew that it had him by the short and curlies and if he so much as tried to run away, he was screwed.

Two feet down, the hole half full of water, Sam's fingernails scratched over stone. He shuddered.

His hesitation was indication enough for the demon.

"You found it. Pull it up. Pull it up!"

Sam pawed at the rock, digging around, pretending it was too big or stuck. Stalling again. The demon's hand grasped the back of his neck and he froze, a kitten held by the scruff.

"You continue to surprise me, Sam Winchester. I have seen your whole life and I know you think you can defeat me as you have every obstacle the world has thrown at you." The grip tightened. "But you have neglected to admit to yourself, you cannot kill a thought. You cannot kill _me_." The demon knelt, lips just behind Sam's ear. "So long as you have a mind, I will be there. I will be what moves in the corner of your eye. I will be the shadow at the end of the hallway. You let me in, Sam Winchester. And now you will set me free..." It forced Sam's face closer to the ground. "Or your brother will spend eternity trapped in your subconscious. How long until your demons break down the walls you built, hm? Especially once I give them...you."

He had no choice. The thought of Dean suffering as Sam had suffered was worse than the threat of him experiencing it all over again himself.

So he pulled out the last rune stone, a lava rock this time, and tossed it into the woods. A wave of energy pulsed through the earth, making the water ripple.

" _Yesssss_." Ewah released Sam and stood, striding towards the middle of the bog. Already the ground there was crumbling, exposing a cave opening that ravenously drank the surrounding mire. Thunder rumbled, but whether that was because of the shattered spell or because a storm had rolled in, Sam didn't know. All he cared about was finding...something.

 _Wait, what?_

He was supposed to be looking for something, yes. But what was it?

 _Crap. Dean, help!_

* * *

Dean was seeing things. Sometimes it looked like a man, other times a dog, always in the corner of his vision, watching him until he turned his head. Whatever it was, it seemed to getting larger, or closer.

One thing was for certain. The mirrored walls were cracking. It was only a matter of time before they crumbled and he was smothered by whatever was on the other side.

But Dean didn't move. He sat on the floor beside Sam's cage, looking at his crossed legs. Until he heard a sharp intake of breath. He raised his head, blinking when he saw his brother's eyes open.

"Sam?"

They stared at him, lacking recognition but with purpose. Sam sat up, glanced around, then stared at Dean some more.

"Cat caught your tongue?"

Sam looked at his hand, then raised it towards Dean, as though unsure if it was his or not.

"...Alright, I'll bite." Dean reached through the bars and grabbed it. And then he was launched from a catapult. At least, it felt that way. He hit the forefront of Sam's mind like a bird hitting a window and was too stunned for several seconds to acknowledge the fact he was back in the real world, back in Sam's body.

 _Thank God_ , Sam groaned.

 _What happened?_ Dean kept his eyes down, knowing Ewah could be anywhere. They were still at the swamp, which could be a good thing or a bad thing. Then he realized _he_ wasn't keeping his eyes down. Sam was. Dean was now riding shotgun, and he didn't mind surrendering the wheel.

Rather than explaining, Sam uploaded everything that happened since Dean was booted to the darkest recesses of his mind, all the while shuffling his own memories in order to recollect what the hell he was supposed to be doing. His subconscious mind had bundled up everything it didn't want Ewah to know, including his theory of how to destroy the demon, and dragged it to the same place Dean was sent, where it made a cocoon around itself until it was safe to come out. Now that it was back, he knew what he needed.

Dean got all the information in a heartbeat. _Damn...Well where the hell is the thing?_

Ewah was gone, but its stench was not. It was near. Sam began to crawl through the swamp.

 _We need to find it._

 _Find what?_

 _The mirror._

Although he couldn't recall the face of who dropped it here, Sam remembered it was the person who freed a portion of Ewah to begin with. They had brought a mirror with them, probably for self-defence should their plan go awry, and had left it behind when they departed.

If Sam and Dean couldn't find it now, they were well and truly boned.

 _It was over there somewhere_ , said Dean, showing Sam an image of a particular lump of reeds a few feet away. Sam didn't argue, glancing once towards the large hole in the ground before crawling over to the spot indicated. He raked his fingers through the mud, disregarding rocks and branches and decaying reeds.

 _Where's the rifle Garth gave us?_ asked Dean.

 _Dunno. Dropped it somewhere. Probably too gummed up to be of use._

 _Dammit._

Sam kept looking, trying to ignore Dean's roiling anxiety. No doubt it was birthed from his helplessness.

 _If we'd thought of this earlier, we could have brought a mirror with us_ , said Dean witheringly, catching Sam's speculations.

 _When has anything been that easy for us?_

 _Let me dream, Sam._

He smirked, then froze at the touch of something deep in the muck, something that didn't feel like a rock or a branch.

 _...No way._

Sam didn't answer, merely pulling out an oval, silver hand mirror from the mire.

 _Clean it off, quick!_

He moved to a larger pool of water, waving the mirror through it to wash off century-old mud. The water was just as filthy but he could see a gleam of silver.

Behind him, he didn't hear the burbling that came from the large hole, and so did not turn to see the sludge that was boiling up from deep within the earth, carrying with it a stench most foul.

Sam sat on his heels, trying to catch a glimpse of any reflection over his shoulder in the dim light. He could see movement behind him, and thought it might be wind rippling the reeds. Only there was no wind.

 _Sam—_

 _I know, Dean._ He chanced a look behind him.

Something was rising from a boiling pile of sludge where the hole used to be. It was more than twice the size of a man, its body black, burly and gorilla-like, with short, stocky legs and long arms. Goat horns curled back over its elongated, animal head, and it had a mane of wriggly tendrils. An anaconda tail flicked back and forth behind it, tipped with a stinger. It was too dark to get a good look at the Beast in full, and that just made it worse.

 _Flashlight, over there._

 _I see it._ Sam tried to be quick without making a lot of noise, but the demon seemed too enthralled with its liberation to take notice of the lowly mortal crawling through the mud. He picked the flashlight up but did not point it back at Ewah.

The demon was laughing, a cold, guttural sound.

"At _lasssst_."

 _Sam, turn around._

 _Not yet._

 _Turn—_

"You."

Before he could do anything, something slammed into his back, shoving him face down into the mire. Coarse fingers wrapped around him, picking him up like he was nothing and turning him over. Sam shut his eyes, holding the light and mirror tightly.

"I have you to thank for this, Wwwinchesters," Ewah purred. Sam knew he was being held right up to its face. He could feel its breath, which was as aromatic as a latrine.

 _Sam, do something._

 _What?_

 _Just something!_

 _Don't panic!_

 _I'm not panicking—!_

Ewah squeezed him, and both brothers felt it.

"You have no idea how many _centuries_ I've spent waiting for this. I never thought I would have my rightful freedom again, not even when a part of me escaped and built the little fortress for you to play in." It squeezed Sam harder, making him writhe. "And then you two come along, and lead me to the one who betrayed me. I utterly _dessstroyed_ them. Erased them from the annals of existence. Not even I remember who they were or what they looked like. And no one will ever again. But your _souls_. What I needed the most. They were an invaluable tribute."

"Well," Sam gasped, trying to smile. "You're welcome, then."

A deep, rumbling growl. He felt the movement of air and knew he was being brought closer to the demon's face. He didn't need to breathe but he was near hyperventilating.

"What are you holding, Sam?"

"Oh what, this?" His grip tightened around the mirror, reflective side out. "It's just a—" He whipped it up between his face and Ewah's, but before he could even start hoping it would work, the demon snarled and threw him into a tree.

If he'd been alive, it would have killed him. As it was, it felt like the brothers had totalled the Impala, slamming it into a pole and spinning across the road. They were too stunned to move once their ride rolled into the ditch.

Dean recovered first. His brother's body was in a heap on the ground. He couldn't move it. Sam's eyes were half open and it looked like a massive arm was coming towards them.

 _Sam! Sam, wake up_.

Teeth filled his limited view. They were bleached, herbivorous in positioning but predatory in shape, like a meat-eating goat. It had no lips Dean could discern; the demon had a permanent smile, and not the warm and fuzzy kind either. Its mouth didn't move as it spoke.

"So weak."

His arm was seized, and Ewah dragged his limp body back into the mire.

"Frail."

 _Dude, come on._ Dean prodded at the stunned mental mass he knew was his brother.

"But it will serve me well." The monster was looming over them. Something hot and slimy dripped onto Sam's face, but Dean could do nothing to wipe it away. Ewah's breath sounded loud and close.

 _Sam, we're about to be bunk bros with a giant ugly demon, WAKE YOUR ASS UP!_

Blam!

Everything fell still. Ewah leaned away from the brothers, turning slowly towards the sound Dean knew was a gun blast.

 _Sammy..._

He felt his brother stir, mentally if not physically. His eyes opened a little bit more, revealing the demon's cadaverous face. Fortunately for them, it was turning away from them, but Dean was still able to see the three eyes on the half closest to them. They were orange and riddled with pupils.

 _Look away, Sam!_

Lids closed. Dean sighed with relief. He had no idea how close he'd been to going bonkers and he didn't want to know.

 _Sam, you gotta get up. The cavalry's arrived._

 _Huh? What?_

 _Garth's here, you dingus! Ewah will eat him alive!_

Sam's spine had the strength of a wet noodle, but he made it sit him up. Coordination was quickly returning to him, faster than it would have had he been alive. He looked around.

There was Garth, standing before the monster like a terrier before a mastiff, decked out with sufficient ammo to sink a battleship. There was a light in his breast pocket, bright enough to throw the demon into a silhouette. He held a sniper rifle up to his face, and Sam thought that a rather good idea. Keep his focus as small as possible so he was less likely to look at Ewah in the eye, without blinding himself entirely.

Of course he still thought the man foolish and was going to get himself killed.

"Garth! Get out of here!"

A crack and flash from the barrel of the rifle, and the demon roared.

"Silver bullets, bitch!" Garth whooped, then he dashed into the trees to avoid Ewah's swinging arm. At least he'd had the brains to keep out of the mire.

Sam got to his feet and looked around. Dread twisted his guts.

 _Dude, where's the mirror?_

 _I didn't see where it went._

The gun went off again, from a different position. The demon roared but seemed reluctant to leave the reaches of the swamp. Or perhaps it didn't want its potential vessel to slip away while it was distracted.

Sam was betting on the latter, for it turned around and knocked him flat, pinning him with one hand. He screwed his eyes shut before one of the demon's six could lock with them.

"Please, stay. I _insist_."

The monster turned again to Garth, leaving Sam in growing dread as root-like tendrils, like the ones in Corvus Manor, burst out of the ground and wrapped around him, roping him down.

"Garth!"


	47. Murder

**3:58 AM**

* * *

~47~ Murder

Sam writhed as Ewah's tendrils wrapped about him, keeping him on the ground. If he didn't free himself soon, Garth was doomed.

 _We need that mirror!_ Dean cried.

 _Working on it._ Sam focused on keeping one arm free. He raised it up and held it there even as roots wrapped around his upper arm and tried to pull it down. The rest coiled around his other arm, legs, torso and neck, growing tighter and tighter. But he didn't need to breathe.

 _Which pouch has the silver?_

Dean brightened. _Left hip, I think._

The utility belt Garth had supplied them with was caked with mud but none of the pouches seemed to have opened. Sam waited until the tendrils stopped tightening, satisfied they had him. And then he reached for the pouch, tearing away roots until he could unbutton it. Silver nuggets poured out, and the tendrils recoiled like wounded snakes at the touch of them.

Sam grabbed a fistful and sprinkled them over himself, and the roots began to retreat. But then he heard a scream.

"Garth!" He couldn't see demon or hunter. He wrenched at his living restraints, tearing away chunks and casting them away. He heard the snuffs and snarls of what sounded like an angry lion, the crash of trees, another gunshot.

Finally, he was up, but at a loss as to what to do. Find the mirror, or help Garth.

 _We can't help Garth without that mirror!_ Dean snapped. _Check around this tree. It must be around there._

Despite Dean's logic, Sam was reluctant to turn his back on the racket, which sounded like Hulk on the loose. But he did, hunting around the tree he had been thrown against. There was the flashlight, easy enough to spot, and he shined it around, seeking a gleam of silver amidst the roots and grass.

 _Hurry!_

 _Doing my best here!_ Sam pushed hair out of his face, slicking it back with mud. There wasn't an inch of him not covered in the stuff.

 _At least you'll have nice skin after this,_ said Dean.

 _Thank God for small mercies._

A roar like a bull, and then Ewah was back in the mire, smashing trees aside. Sam lurched forward and ducked behind the tree a second before the demon's fist smashed down on him.

 _Whoa, that was close_.

Sam didn't reply, concentrating on scrambling back as the tree was uprooted like a dandelion, showering him with dirt.

"Come here!" Ewah roared. It cast the tree aside and Sam rolled onto his front to avoid meeting the demon's eyes. He expected any second to feel a crushing agony and then—

A questioning sound emitted from Ewah's maw, and it turned from its prey. Something was coming...

The sounds of their wings was matched by their relentless caws; a mass of crows had swarmed over the treeline and was making for the mire. Ewah roared in challenge, knowing they weren't crows, but were in fact a race as old as the demon itself.

Sam heard the cawing as well and tilted his head, but did not look up. It sounded like a _lot_ of crows.

 _Move it._

Sam obeyed his brother, scrambling on all fours further from the demon.

 _Crap. Garth._

He sensed his brother's regret, then felt him sweep it under the rug to find later.

 _We'll get him after. Just stay alive._

The murder of crows neared like a black tsunami, and Ewah roared again. Sam risked a look up, to see the night roiling with their wings. In seconds, they blocked the sky entirely, a churning thundercloud.

 _The hell is going on?_

 _Dunno._ Sam began to creep around the demon, back towards the uprooted tree. As long as Ewah's attention was fixated on the birds, he would have time to find the hand mirror. But he'd only just gotten back to the edge of the mire when a horrible shriek made him cover his ears and cower. Ewah added its scream to the hellish din, not in anger this time, but in pain.

 _What the—?_

 _Focus, Sam! Keep looking!_

Jarred back into action, Sam swept the area with the flashlight, ignoring the roars and snuffs and caws from the skirmish behind him.

Something hit him in the back, bouncing off and landing in the water. Turning, he shone the light on a dead crow, wing ripped off, neck broken.

Several more birds joined it seconds later, raining down around him, some mangled, all dead. Listening, he could hear Ewah smacking the creatures out of the sky even as it roared in pain, and gradually the cacophony of the crows dimmed.

 _Running out of time, Sam._

Even as Dean spoke, Sam caught a glimpse of something shiny in the reeds.

 _There!_ He lunged for it, grabbing a fistful of the plants as he tore the mirror from their midst and held it up. Pointing the beam of the flashlight behind him, he tilted the mirror just so.

There was the demon, arms slashing through the air and knocking the crows from the air by the dozens. There were so many, it was impossible to miss. But they fought back, diving at Ewah's face, attacking its eyes.

 _Valkyries, what did I tell you?_ said Sam.

 _That's great. But how are we supposed to turn the demon's weapon against itself if it has no eyes?!_

Sam stiffened, then lurched to his feet, turning towards the battle.

"Hey!" he cried. "Knock it off!"

His shouts had no effect. The birds continued their attack, covering the demon's head entirely. Sam cursed. He needed to get their attention.

 _Maybe that rifle Garth gave us will work. If it isn't swamped,_ said Dean.

Sam turned away, trudging through the mire towards the spot Ewah had ambushed them. He didn't find the rifle, but he found the machete, its hilt sticking out of the water. He grabbed it and slipped into its sheath on the utility belt.

 _Sam, I don't think we need to distract them anymore._

Sam had noticed it too. The reduction of noise. He faced the fight just in time to watch the last few dozens of crows spiral up into the sky, cawing in rage as scores of their kin lay broken. But they were not as angry as the demon, who had but one eye left after their assault.

"No!" Ewah tore up the forest around it, smashing trees and uprooting boulders. Sam couldn't get near. It would have been safer to leap into the gullet of a wood chipper.

 _We'll never get close enough_ , said Sam.

 _...Then let it come to us._

Sam lowered himself to all fours, mud oozing between his fingers, and backed into the reeds. He clicked off the flashlight and filled his lungs.

"Hey! Twatwaffle!"

Ewah stopped bellowing at the retreating valkyries, and slowly turned towards the mire, towards Sam.

. _.._ _Twatwaffle_ _?_

Sam ignored his brother and watched as the demon shuffled closer, sniffing. With one eye, it swung its head back and forth to see all around it. He stilled, a grouse in the grass.

 _Don't move,_ said Dean.

 _I'm not moving._

 _Shh._

 _You shh—!_

"Oh, Sssaaaam..."

He stiffened.

"I can hear you, Sam. I can _sssmell_ yoooou."

The demon was getting closer, using its fists as well as its feet, like a gorilla, peering around with its remaining eye. Its stench was a heavy quilt. Sam opened his mouth to breathe.

 _Come on, closer...closer..._

He waited for its eye to be in his direction, but then the demon strode past him, out of his line of sight, without even looking at him. He blanched. Turning around now would be like shaking maracas to reveal his location.

 _Missed the bus, there, Sammy._

 _Thanks for the update._

It was behind him. And he couldn't have been more sure it had seen him if it had shot him.

Sam leaped to his feet, water exploding everywhere as he drew the machete and whirled around in one smooth movement. He closed his eyes and felt the weapon slice into something. Ewah roared but his triumph was short, for the demon's other hand swung around and snatched hold of him, lifting him up in the air. Ewah shook him like a doll, squeezing him until he felt something pop.

"Insignificant whelp. I will _devour_ _you!_ "

An intense fear spawned from Dean's consciousness, and without a word from him Sam came to know why. Those had been the demon's very words before it utterly annihilated someone. No face, no name, no memory of them left in existence, physically, mentally, or spiritually. Not even the demon remembered them.

 _Sam—_

 _I know, Dean._ He opened his eyes just in time for a lovely view of Ewah's maw, as tall as his arms were wide. A stench washed over him, so putrid it blurred his vision and made him gag.

 _Someone needs a TicTac._

As the demon brought him closer, savouring its victory, Dean had one bit of advice.

 _I don't think I need to tell you this is not the time to choke, Sammy._

His hand tightened around the machete in response. As Ewah brought him close, he thrust it up, right through the roof of the demon's mouth.

It roared in agony and dropped him. Pain ripped through his body and his legs folded under him as hot demon blood spattered over him like rain. The Beast staggered back, whipping its head back and forth, mouth open to shake the machete free. Sam did not follow, playing the wounded bird, hoping to draw the monster back. Its rage was tangible. It would take the bait.

 _We got one shot at this,_ said Dean.

 _We only need one shot._

 _...If we mess up...well, it's been fun, man._

Sam watched as the demon finally ripped the machete out of its mouth, throwing it aside.

 _I love you too, Dean._

 _Don't you go getting mushy._

Smiling lightly, Sam lowered his head, listening to Ewah charge.

 _Ready?_

Dean gave a mental nod. _Let's Bloody Mary this bitch._

Sam raised his head, opened his eyes. Raising the mirror, he waited until Ewah was close before clicking on the flashlight and pointing it at the reflective surface for just a second, luring the demon's eye for that one critical moment.

It slid to a stop, fixated on the mirror. Its chest heaved like angry bellows, the only sound in the forest. And then, it began to laugh.

Dread like he'd never felt before filled Sam's gut. It didn't work. Their only plan had failed.

Ewah's laughter grew and grew, becoming less amused and more maniacal. Sam pushed himself to his feet and backed up, wary, as it threw its head back, mouth open wide to emit the mocking sounds.

And then black gunk spewed from its throat. It didn't seem to notice or care, upchucking the stuff between bouts of laughter as its body convulsed violently.

 _Dude, might want to stand clear._

Sam needed no further prompting. The demon had begun to claw at itself, ripping massive gashes in its own hide that bled more dark sludge. It yanked on its goat horns until they snapped, casting them aside, then pulled a mass of tendrils out of the back of its head. It was tearing itself apart.

Sam plowed out of the mire as quickly as he could, not looking back until he was in the safety of the trees. The demon was ripping out its own innards now, its blood like oil all over the swamp.

An idea came to him. Or maybe it came to Dean and he shared it. Whoever came up with it, neither thought it wasn't worth trying. Sam hunted through the utility belt until he found the matchbook.

 _I would ask if you would do the honours, but..._

 _Man, I'm just glad I get to watch,_ said Dean. _Do it._

Sam approached the writhing monster of madness, no longer afraid. He watched it with contempt, perhaps enjoying watching it suffer a bit too much. Then he ripped the cover off the matchbook and dragged the abrasive patch over the row of heads. They blazed into life, and he relished a few seconds of warmth before casting the matches into the mire.

The oily blood caught, flames spreading across the mire in seconds, patches of reeds smoking like fiery crowns. And they found the demon, flaring a poisonous green as they spread over its ropy hide. The Beast screamed, smacking and clawing and tearing at the flames even as its body disintegrated.

"You will not forget me, Winchesters!" it roared. "You will _never_ forget me!"

With a final bellow into the sky, Ewah dissolved into ash, the fire drowning itself in the mire. The demon of madness was no more.


	48. Judgment

**4:10 AM**

* * *

~48~ Judgment

Sam stood at the edge of the mire, watching the last of the demon blood burn to nothing, eyes reflecting the blaze. Only when complete darkness fell did he finally accept that it was over.

 _Not quite_ , said Dean softly. Sam could feel him staring at him from the passenger side of their mental Impala. He ignored him, turning his back on the swamp and trudging into the woods.

He didn't go far before finding a spring. Kneeling, he washed his hands, his forearms, his face and neck, pulling out chunks of mud from his hair. Dean waited patiently.

 _We both knew this was coming._

Sam paused, staring at his black, warped reflection. _Dean—_

 _We can't go on like this._

 _We can try. If I just avoid touching iron, or salt..._

 _I can see that being possible. But, dude. I don't_ want _to go on like this._

" _Awk!_ _Awk-awk_ _!_ "

Sam looked up. Dozens of crows had landed in the trees and were staring down at him. The survivors of their attack on the demon. He swallowed, throat tight.

 _But..._

 _It'll be alright, Sam. We've died before. Heaven's not so bad, is it? And if we end up below, well, at least we know the ropes._

Sam couldn't help but chuckle, and he could feel Dean's grin. They were both being brave for each other and they knew it, not that it mattered to them. He unbuttoned a few pouches in the utility belt until he found one containing the jar of iron filings. He twisted off the cap and was about to pour some onto his palm when he was struck with a thought.

 _We can't go without saying goodbye to Garth._

 _...Alright, fair enough._

Sam gladly put the jar away, returning to the mire. From there, he turned to where the ground had been torn up and the trees smashed to splinters. This was where the demon had pursued Garth.

 _Hope he's okay._

 _He's fine. Just call him._

Sam did so, a lonely voice fading to silence as he followed the destruction. But he did not get far before stopping, looking up.

There were more crows now. More valkyries. They stared down at him with unwavering intensity, dropping to lower branches to get closer. He knew what they were going to do. Soon.

 _We'll never find him in time. We either go out our way or_ their _way._

 _I'm gonna let you make that call,_ said Dean.

A few birds dropped to even lower branches. The closest was but feet away. They were going to make the decision for him.

But he'd already made up his mind. He wanted to let the valkyries take them, but something, some deep-seated doubt, told him he would ultimately come to regret that choice. He decided not to think about it too deeply and pulled out the jar of iron filings again, unscrewing the lid.

 _Right,_ said Dean. _Guess I'll see you on the other side._

 _Yeah. You too._ Without giving himself the chance to change his mind, Sam dumped the entire jar into his palm. An electric jolt shot up his arm and he felt like he was kicked in the chest by a horse, and then hauled away by a rope. He did not feel his body hit the forest floor.

* * *

Death, he decided, was a bit less comfortable than he remembered. Of course it had been worse the first time he ate it. The second had been spent running from angels but at least there had been no meat hooks or skinning knives. This time, however, he felt like he was lying on a splintery wooden floor.

"Dean."

He opened his eyes, seeing a blurred face but a foot away. He groaned.

"I had to share a car and a body with you, now I gotta spend the afterlife with you as well?"

Sam grinned, then helped his brother sit up.

"I think we got on the wrong train."

Dean looked around, frowning at a semi-familiar room. It was barren of all furniture, the window was boarded up from the inside and the walls were plain, cracked plaster. A single candle sat in the corner, offering a little light. The brothers' shadows loomed on the opposite wall.

"Is this...?"

Sam nodded. "Corvus Manor. I think we're on the third floor, the labyrinth version."

"But how?"

He shrugged, standing and making for the door. He put his hand on the knob, but hesitated. "Not sure what will happen once I open this door."

Dean joined him, eyes tracing the frame. "Well it can't be any worse than staying in this room for eternity."

"Yeah. Guess you're right." He grasped the knob tightly and was about to turn it when a tremor rumbled under his feet. "...Did you feel that?"

"Uh huh." Dean looked unsettled, eyes darting here and there, waiting for more. And more came.

The next tremor forced them to bend their knees to keep their balance, arms shooting out to the sides. The floorboards buckled, walls shifted. And suddenly, Sam knew what was happening.

"Dean, we need to go!"

He yanked the door open, staggering into the frame as he stepped into the hallway.

"What's going on?" Dean followed and nearly collided with Sam as another tremor shook the manor.

"The demon made this place. Now that it's dead, it's falling apart! We have to get out!" Sam led the way, staggering side to side down the hallway.

In addition to the mini quakes, things kept disappearing and reappearing, quick as a flash. Walls, sections of the floor and ceiling. Even his brother flickered from his vision. Dean rubbed his eyes and kept going, trusting him to know what he was doing.

Left, right, left again. The marks Sam had made on the walls earlier were guiding them out, for they were no longer sabotaged by Ewah's influence and it was clear which way they had to go. The only thing slowing them down was the tremors that shook them off balance.

"Faster, Dean!"

He lengthened his strides even though it sent him staggering into a corner, spinning him half around. He kept on Sam's tail, diving through the hole in the wall of bars and into the last stretch of hallway before the stairs. Then he heard footsteps behind him.

"Look out!" He grabbed Sam's jacket and threw him against the wall, flattening himself there moments before their pursuer darted past them. No, not a pursuer. Whoever it was didn't even look at them, running at full tilt in dark robes, a crucifix necklace bouncing on his chest.

Sam gawked as the balding man disappeared through the door, down the stairs.

"Was that...?"'

"Pastor Gregory. Got some work done, he looks great." Dean leaped forward as a massive crack split open the wall he'd been pressed up against, spitting dust. "Keep moving."

Sam didn't argue, following the pastor down the stairs.

At the bottom, he had to slam on the brakes as a miniature army thundered down the hall, nearly running him over. They were all wearing nineteenth century garb of various classes, but most were simple servant uniforms. None of them so much as looked the Winchesters' way.

"Oh, don't let us slow you down. We only just saved your asses," Dean drawled.

"Come on!" Sam followed the stampede, hearing more people fall in behind them. He kept to Dean's side, not wanting to be separated.

They paused at the crown of the foyer, looking over the balcony to the front door. It was wide open, emitting a blinding light that enveloped every soul that passed through. They recognized a few – Bede with a handful of wax dolls; Uncle Edward, a chessboard under his arm; the children who'd been poisoned. Most were unfamiliar, those who never showed their faces but had been with the brothers the entire time. And of them, not all had died in October of 1846; they were the unfortunates who suffered the same fate as the Winchesters, unable to solve the mystery of Corvus Manor in time. Their nineteenth century attire made it easy for Sam and Dean to pick them out in the crowd. Some even looked like hunters.

Dresses were hiked, bonnets and scarves and top hats were held on heads; no one seemed to know anyone else was around but they were making it out without pushing or shoving, like a choreographed play.

"Hey, check it out." Dean pointed to three familiar faces hesitantly making towards the front door. George, Dave, and Tyson. The trio whose deaths had brought the manor to the attention of the latest batch of hunters.

Dave noticed the brothers up on the balcony and elbowed his friends. They looked up, waved. Sam waved back and Dean nodded. And then they were gone, joining the others in whatever was next for them.

"We did it, Dean."

"Yeah, now it's our turn." He faced about, only to be stopped cold by someone standing right behind them.

"Jesus," Sam gasped.

It was Ariel, but she wasn't a mess anymore. Her hair and dress were neat, face clean, body not covered in blood. In her arms was a swaddled infant, whose face was hidden from them. She smiled, not seeming to notice or care about the next quake that had the brothers leaning on the balcony. Instead, she stepped forward and left a kiss on Sam's cheek, then Dean's, before following a man down the stairs. It took the hunters a few seconds to recognize the man as Judge Thomas Corvus.

"Well I'm glad someone had the decency to thank us," said Dean, watching Ariel pass through the front door, into freedom.

Sam glanced back, to see, well, nothing. There was nothing left to see. Most of the manor was gone. They would be gone too if they didn't haul ass.

"Come on." He had only started trotting down the stairs when suddenly, they weren't stairs anymore, but a slide.

"Whoa!" He fell on his butt and began to shoot down the curved case, Dean right behind him, and at the bottom their combined weight slammed into the grandfather clock, knocking it flat on its face.

 _Twong!_

Glass and gears shot off across the floor. The brothers untangled themselves from each other and got to their feet, staring at the antique.

"Some serious déjà vu right there," Dean muttered. He glanced back at the stair slide. "Didn't we already fall for that?"

"Not gonna think about it too much." Sam turned to watch the last few stragglers make it out, and with Dean at his side, he approached the front door. The light was blinding.

"You ready for this?"

"...No," Dean admitted, arm up to shield his eyes. He wanted to look at his brother one last time. Wanted him to be the last thing he saw. Sam was smiling.

"Me neither. Let's get this over with."

Sam went through first, stepping over the threshold, into nothing. He felt warm, pleasantly so. Maybe his heaven will be an eternal warm spring afternoon. That would be nice...

Piercing pain, like claws digging into both shoulders. He could see nothing but he felt himself being lifted into the air.

"Dean!"

"Sam!" His brother's cry was alarmed and pained, and growing distant. "Sam!"

He thrashed but the pain intensified. "No! Dean!" Air buffeted him, like he was being battered by wing beats. A mouse in the talons of a hawk. He tried to fight back but there was nothing to hit, nothing to grab. He looked down. There was only Corvus Manor, and it was getting smaller and smaller as he was lifted away. And then it collapsed, a drop of ink in a sea of milk, swirling and dissipating until there was nothing left.

Sam struggled against his captor, who could only be hauling him to hell by hurting him like this. And then the claws retracted and he was falling...

Falling...


	49. Rekindled

**7:06 AM**

* * *

~49~ Rekindled

It was like rising from the depths of the deepest sleep. He breathed slow and easy, inhaling the scents of an ancient forest. Damp wood, loam, decay. He opened his eyes. Branches were blurs between blotches of dawn's light.

Sam's breathing quickened as the last of sleep slunk away, and he raised his head, brow creased in confusion. Where was he?

Weak, it took a lot of energy to sit up, earth sticking to his hair and back. His shoulders ached. A headrush blinded him for a few seconds, and then he looked around, blinking owlishly.

"...Hello?"

His lonely voice was swallowed by the forest, ignored by the songbirds. And yet someone replied.

"Sam?"

His head whipped around so quick, his neck kinked. "Garth!"

The scrawny hunter popped his head over the bushes, face brightening. "Well slap me thrice! Sam! Or is it Dean?"

"It's me. It's Sam." He rolled onto his hands and knees, trying to get up, but the strength just wasn't there. Then Garth was at his side, arm under his, helping him straighten. He thought it would be like using a twig to stand but Garth had surprising strength. Although his lack of height was something he couldn't help, and so he helped the bigger man to the nearest tree to lean up against.

Sam took in several deep breaths. Now that he was standing, he could see the destruction that had been wrought in the area. Toppled trees and torn up earth, the work of Ewah in its fit of rage. Sam was right where he had touched iron, sending him and Dean back to Corvus Manor.

"What happened?"

Garth shrugged, and for the first time Sam noticed the blood caked to the side of his face.

"Hey, are you hurt?"

"Oh, this?" Garth touched the side of his head gingerly, wincing. "Just a bump. That demon whacked me good. Last thing I remember before..." He spread his arms out, glancing around. "What about you? Did we win?"

Sam looked down at his hands, opening and closing them. They felt like his. Well and truly. "I...I don't know." He suddenly noticed the thudding in his chest. His heart was pounding a million miles per hour. And it felt glorious. "I'm alive," he breathed.

Garth pressed two fingers to Sam's neck to check for himself. He whistled. "I'll be. But how? I thought..."

" _Awk!_ "

Sam looked up, Garth following his gaze. A crow sat in a tree above them, cocking its head to look down at them with one black eye. Then it took off, winging its way east. It flew through a ray of the rising sun and vanished. Sam blinked.

 _No...no, it can't be..._

He slipped out of his jacket and unbuttoned the top of his shirt, tugging it to expose his shoulder. There were three new scars, punctures, in a row, the middle lower than the other two. Each were the size of his thumbnail. Three more indented his other shoulder, and when he felt around, he found one more on each of the backs of his shoulders. It'd been like a very large bird had picked him up with its talons.

"Sam? Earth to Sam."

"What?"

"If you're back, does that mean...?"

He jolted. "Dean must be too. Come on—"

"Whoa, easy there, cowboy!" Garth managed to stop Sam from falling on his face. "You'd been a slab of meat lying on a table for several hours, remember."

Sam grunted and pulled on his jacket before pressing back against the tree again. He just needed a few minutes. "Where's Agnes?"

Garth's face turned grim. "I'm not entirely sure. 'Bout an hour after you two left—that is, you and Dean, in just you—she started mumbling a lot of weird stuff. I couldn't snap her out of it. Then before I could stop her, she ran into the woods and – this is gonna sound crazy – all those crows followed her. Looked like hundreds of them." He shrugged. "To be honest I was a little freaked out. I didn't know what to do, so I followed you."

"How did you find us?"

Garth dug a device out of his pocket, grinning. "GPS on that utility belt I gave you. This baby will also help us get back to my truck."

Sam stared, then scoffed, smiling. "What would we do without you, man?"

Garth grinned, but then it faded. "So yeah, dunno what happened to Dr Corri— Agnes, whatever her name is. Hope she's okay."

Sam had a hunch, conceived between his encounters with her in Corvus Manor and the crows' attack on Ewah's eyes. He had no idea if people, if witches, could become valkyries, but he wasn't taking that card off the table.

"We should go," said Sam, pushing off the tree. This time, he didn't topple.

"Yeah, we gotta spring your brother from the morgue." Garth grinned again, but it froze awkwardly on his face. Sam didn't question it, as he'd just had the exact same thought.

"Um, did we...?"

Garth nodded, pale. "Put your brother back in the body fridge before we left? Yep."

"...Crap."

* * *

It was dark, and cold, and there was very little air. Dean pulled off the sheet covering his face and looked around, but didn't see so much as a thread of light. He coughed.

"'Elp..." Mouth was dry. He tried to take in breath. The air was too thin. "'Elp!"

He scooted until his feet touched where the door of the body fridge would be and kicked. It boomed and rattled but did not open. He kicked again. He would probably scare someone but that was a better alternative to suffocating like this.

"'Elp! 'Lease!" His cries were wispy and so he kept kicking and punching until his vision swam and his mouth remained open, trying to draw in every molecule of oxygen left in what, after everything, was going to be his tomb.

Then, a bright light...

The sound of inhalation, the retreat of death. Dean sucked in a full lungful, but did not savour it before expelling it and taking another greedily. He was jolted as the tray he was lying on was pulled out of the body fridge and he squinted in the light, covering his eyes with an arm.

"Sam?"

"No."

The voice of an elderly woman. Blinking, Dean looked over at her. "...Are you my reaper?"

"Excuse me?"

"Sorry. It's just that you don't seem surprised to see me...like this."

Her smile was kind. She was trembling from what he thought might be Parkinson's, and she retreated to sit on a swivel chair nearby. She had blood on her hands and arms but didn't appear to be hurt.

"My name is Lilly Andersen. I spoke with your brother yesterday, and your friend Garth."

"Lilly?" Dean sat up stiffly, wincing. Everything hurt. "But...we thought you died. The demon—"

"Must be no more, if you are here. And it never got me." She rolled up her sleeve where the Beast, using Detective Roberts, had grabbed her. A bloody hand print coated the bruises there, but it was what wasn't there that she wanted to show him. "I have a few tricks up my sleeve, so to speak."

Dean recalled the bracelet he'd found in the hallway, when he was possessing Sam's body. "Huh. Silver."

She smiled.

Dean paused, imagining the scene, then he snorted, smirking. "You are one tough cookie."

"Why thank you, dear. It seems you have a thick hide yourself."

"I can take a hit." He eased his legs off the table, holding the sheet around his waist. He waved down her offer for help but decided to take it slow. "I'm thinking I should make myself scarce."

"The morning shift will be in soon, yes."

Dean focused on standing without appearing to be a total klutz, glancing around. There was a bit of a mess to clean up, to cover Garth's ass if nothing else.

"Have you seen...?"

"The others, no. I'd hoped you could tell me what happened."

"I'll do what I can. But let me get dressed first..."


	50. Ashes

***glances over shoulder* How the feck did this get so long?**

 **Anyway. Thanks for the favourites, follows and reviews. *tips hat* Ta.**

* * *

 **8:35 AM**

* * *

~50~ Ashes

The Impala rumbled up to the gates of Corvus Manor for the third and final time. Sam and Garth were waiting, sitting casually on the tailgate of an old Ford pickup. They waved as though nothing extraordinary had happened in the past twelve hours and they were just meeting up with a few buddies for drinks.

Dean pushed open the squeaky door and stepped out of the Impala, nodding once to his brother and friend before going around and helping Lilly out of the passenger side. She pretended to huff about it but accepted the aid nonetheless, gazing up at the iron gates, and at the mansion beyond.

"Ugly as I remember it."

Sam and Garth slipped off the tailgate of the pickup, the latter relieving Dean of Lilly's elbow to allow the brothers a moment.

Sam and Dean stood before one another, a quick scan checking for less obvious damage. A brief phone call had been adequate in ensuring the other was still kicking, but only a face to face brought peace of mind.

Sam bobbed his chin. "Hey."

"Hey," said Dean. He sniffed. "You stink."

Sam looked down at himself, caked with bog mud, then back up, half smiling. Dean remained deadpan but he grasped Sam's offered forearm and pulled him into a brief man-hug, shoulder to shoulder, arm pounding each other's back.

"Ready?"

"Let's do this."

Agnes, it seemed, had finally remembered enough to take down her wards before joining her new avian posse. Dean stepped up to the gates and snipped the padlock's shackle with bolt cutters, dragging the chain away and casting it aside. The gates shrieked as he pushed them open. Grabbing a pair of jerrycans and a knapsack from the trunk, he followed the others up the long, white-gravelled walkway to the manor.

Lilly and Garth had no issues stepping onto the portico and to the front door, but both Sam and Dean hesitated. They'd just made it out of there. Why the hell would they want to go back in?

Garth looked back. "Hey, if you can't do this, I can handle it—"

Dean scowled and marched up the steps, shouldering him aside. "Don't coddle us, okay? We're fine. Sam."

The younger hunter took his cue, moving to stand by Dean's side. And together, they threw themselves at the door, shoulder first. Ancient wood splintered and the portal swung open. Before he could scare himself again, Sam stepped inside, clicking on a flashlight.

Everything looked the same. Dustier, more worn, and brighter in the morning light, but it was definitely the same foyer.

The others filed in after him, Dean coming to stand beside him with his scowl still in place. Both looked down and saw the same thing at the same time. The grandfather clock, lying on its face, in the same position they'd left it before leaving the Collective Unconscious.

The brothers looked to each other. Sam opened his mouth, but stayed his tongue as Dean raised a finger.

"Don't you say a word." He turned away, leaving his brother to stare at the clock a while longer.

"Alright." Dean picked up the knapsack and zipped it open, pulling out canisters of salt and lighter fluid. "No fast way of doing this. Going to have to go through every room. Salt every bone you find and give it a shot of fire juice. If you want to help, Lilly, best stay on this floor..."

It took the rest of the morning, and it was a surreal experience for Sam and Dean. They each visited the rooms they'd woken up in when this all began, just for kicks. For Dean, in the second floor guest room the bed was unmade, the wardrobe doors open. For Sam, the footlocker was empty in the servant's bedroom, and it was definitely big enough for him to fit inside. Not that he tested it. And these weren't the only parallels.

The piano was in pieces in the middle of the music hall. There was a scattered game of chess in the sun room. Tea sets were still waiting on the tables in the parlour. In the kids' bedroom were bone jacks waiting to be picked up off the floor. It looked like a whirlwind had gone through the trophy room, taxidermy and displays smashed and knocked off the walls.

But the brothers weren't there to contemplate the parallels between the real world and the Collective Unconscious. They were here to ensure that everyone had gone to rest, whether they wanted to or not.

Thanks to Agnes' wards, the building had been well preserved, even from the weather. Unfortunately, so had the victims of the Corvus massacre. Without insects or vermin to consume the bodies, they had mummified, and not even their clothes had rotted away. It wasn't difficult to see how each of them had died. Some were still clutching the hilts of their murder weapons, or grasping the wounds that killed them.

From top to bottom, the hunters scoured the manor, salting and squirting lighter fluid on every body. Their EMF metres picked up nothing, but it never hurt to be certain. When they glanced out the windows overlooking the back property, they saw Garth breaking into the family crypt, adjacent to the small chapel a few hundred feet away from the manor. There, the remains of Atticus Corvus and the family members who died before the massacre would be taken care of.

Finally, there was one more place for them to investigate. And neither looked forward to it.

"Need me to hold your hand?"

Sam rolled his eyes, stepping before Dean and opening the cellar door. It stank, but not alarmingly so. He led the way down, the beam of the flashlight tracing along the walls.

He wasn't really sure what to expect when he reached the bottom. Bones. Dead roots. Even crates or barrels. But all he found were boards, lying where the well was supposed to be.

"Sam, check this out." Dean was aiming his light at the wall. Sam squinted, then walked over, running his fingers along gouges in the mortared stones.

"Claw marks."

"...Huh. Well, I think we're done here." Dean turned, marching up the stairs.

Sam watched him go, then glanced over his shoulder at the blocked well. Perhaps he imagined it—in fact he must have—but he could have sworn he heard a tiny knock coming from that well...

Sam followed his brother, joining Garth and Lilly in the foyer. Dean had snatched up one of the jerrycans, twisting off the cap.

"Alright. Let's burn this motherhumper down."

Fumes began to fill the manor, and both Garth and Lilly retreated before Sam and Dean, who dumped the last drops of fuel from the jerrycans on the foyer's rug before backing out the front door. Dean flipped up the cap of a Zippo and flicked a flame to life. He held it out to Lilly.

"We wouldn't have made it without you—"

But she was already shaking her head. "I did not endure the nightmare you boys did. This is your beast to slay."

Dean offered it to Garth, who raised his hands in refusal. Sam simply looked amused as Dean turned to him.

"Dude, I ganked the demon. You get the honours."

"Was hoping you'd say that." Dean grinned and didn't even look as he threw the Zippo sideways, into the manor's gullet. A hungry glow expanded quickly as they retreated down the walkway, not looking back until they were off the grounds.

While Garth helped Lilly into the passenger seat of his pickup, Sam and Dean watched the hellish glow filling the manor's innards. The outer walls were stone, but when the wooden supports were consumed with flames, eventually it would all crumble.

"...Why'd we do that? Didn't even get a flicker of EMF."

Dean shrugged. "Some things are better forgotten. 'Sides, the demon was loose in there once. Place is contaminated."

"Hey, guys."

They turned to see Garth. He was wringing his hands.

"So," he said.

"So," said Dean.

Garth shuffled. "Thanks. You guys didn't have to help me with this."

"Yeah, we did," said Sam. "It's what friends do."

His face glowed at the word friends. "Oh, you _guys_." He opened his arms, and the brothers glanced at each other with a look before succumbing to the inevitable, returning Garth's embraces. He gave them each an extra squeeze before stepping out of their personal bubbles.

"Well, I'm gonna drive Lilly home." He glanced back, and the old woman waved from the truck. The brothers waved back. "Keep her company for a while. She says she makes a mean cup of chamomile."

Sam smiled, glancing at his feet. "Take care of yourself, Garth."

He beamed. "You too, Sam."

"Hey, Garth," said Dean. "Next time we meet, you're buying the beers."

He pointed at him. "Gotcha covered, bud."

The brothers watched until Garth climbed into his pickup, backed up, and headed off, honking twice. They waved as he drove around the bend and was lost from sight.

"Aaah." Dean's hand slapped against his leg as he dropped it. "That guy's really something."

"Could say that again." Sam turned and made his way over to Impala's passenger side, Dean mirroring him on the driver's. He paused.

"Hey, I've been thinking—"

"Don't even want to know what you're thinking right now, Sam. I'm tired, I'm hungry. We need to jump town and find a hotel so I can crash, man."

"Wait, Dean, just hold on a moment. You know how those ghosts kept trying to possess guys like us, to get to our bodies in the real world? Well...what if they knew?"

Dean frowned. "About what?"

"About..." Sam gestured, his reflection warped on the roof of the Impala. "What had happened. Yeah, they were all insane, but they knew enough to leave clues for us to follow. What if they knew Agnes was trying to help from the outside world, but because she kept forgetting herself, they wanted to get out here to help her remember?"

Dean's frown deepened, then his eyebrows flew up his forehead. "Dunno. Don't really care either. It's over. Let it go."

Sam opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a shadow passed overhead and he glanced up.

" _Awk!_ "

A crow landed on the car roof between them, cocking its head this way and that, acting very birdlike. And yet, not. The brothers stared at it, then at each other.

"...Agnes?"

The crow looked at Sam, blinked.

"Um...thanks."

"More like you're welcome," Dean grumbled.

The bird turned to him with what could almost be a withering stare, and then took off, leaving a very obvious present behind. Dean glared at the spatter of white on the obsidian paint job, then up at the sky at the ascending avian.

" _Bitch_."

Sam snorted with laughter, then rapped his fingertips against the roof. "Come on, let's get out of here." He opened the door and slipped inside.

Dean grumbled under his breath but followed suit, turning the key in the ignition. The old cat rumbled to life, headlights flaring with anticipation of the next hunt. Gravel spat from beneath her wheels as she bore her charges away.

"We should get cheeseburgers."

Dean glanced at his brother as though he'd suddenly grown a horn in the middle of his forehead. "Dude. Since when have you ever craved cheese or burgers?"

"...So what? I dunno, I just feel like a cheeseburger."

Not willing to bypass the chance for good grub, Dean just shook his head and popped on the radio. He tuned it to a rock station and left it, ignoring Sam's look for almost a minute. Finally—

"What?"

"Dean, this is Vince Vincente."

"So?"

"You _hate_ Vince Vincente."

"Yeah, well maybe I've grown an ear for him, you know how it is."

"Since when? Since, oh, a few hours ago?"

Dean's glare was dangerous. "It isn't what you think it is."

Sam simply returned the look with raised eyebrows. "Fine. Whatever helps you sleep at night."

"...But if I ever try to order a salad with extra kale, slap me."

He smiled. "Will do."

The brothers fell into silence, content to enjoy each others' company as the Impala found the highway and hit it hard, knowing there was a long way to go yet, and no one, not even fate, knew how far it went.

* * *

~Epilogue~

12:59 AM

Something woke him. Perhaps it was a car in need of a muffler. Perhaps it was the mini fridge humming to life. Perhaps it was something else.

Sam stirred, front down on his motel bed, facing the wall. The sheets were a mess around him, the pillow indented from his face. He raised his head, trying to make out the weird shadow on the tacky, puke yellow and maroon wallpaper before him.

Mouth sticky, he ran his tongue along his gums and rolled the other way to find the source of the shadow. He froze. Dean was sitting on the edge of his bed, a dark silhouette, facing Sam.

He opened his mouth to speak, but words caught like dry cockleshells in his throat as Dean raised his head, strips of blue light catching the side of his face from between Venetian blinds. He smiled. And then he opened his eyes, two ochre orbs riddled with black pupils.

Sam gasped awake, bolting upright. A triangle of sweat soaked his shirt around the collar, and he was sucking in air as though he'd nearly suffocated. He looked to Dean in the other bed, but he was asleep, body straight as a soldier's, as was his wont. Peaceful.

Brow creased, Sam punched his pillow into submission and nestled back down, only to roll over onto his side, his back to Dean. It was with trouble he returned to sleep, face lined with unease, for words had begun to whisper through his mind, over and over, and he could not banish them.

" _You will not forget me, Winchester. You will never forget me..._ "

 _ **Spη**_


End file.
